“Killing a spider and other ways you kept me silent”

I caught a spider for you,

Held it up by one desperate leg

In a thin slant of afternoon light.

Your eyebrows slanted down, 

Why don’t you just crush it against the wall

While I watched its small body beleaguered, 

Seven limbs swinging hard to get free.

You barely looked up from your reading 

And asked when I was going to sweep the front hall

You said the dust attracts spiders, it was my fault, 

Which didn’t seem true but mostly I was caught 

On how you could turn away from this alive thing 

Pulsing and twitching in my grasp.

I caught a spider for you because I know they scare you,

You couldn’t bear to spare it a glance. 

I wished I had a spider-sized gun to make his death

Quick and easy and painless. 

How does it feel to be caught 

In between death and the unknown in a foreign bind, 

Air above and air below? I asked, 

And you said you had no time for questions.

Is spider blood red like ours?, my stomach turning,

And then I could really tell I was annoying you,

Waiting for the turn of your head

Or some splinter of gratitude for my bravery 

In holding this inhuman leg above the carpet. 

Just take the damn thing outside and kill it already

But of course I couldn’t, so I watched him disoriented 

In the canyon of my cupped palms until I sat him

Down on the stoop, along with myself,

Envisioning a long spidery hand coming down 

From above to pluck me up and imagining how you

Might respond: Let her go, I imagined you screaming, 

But really you would ask the giant imaginary alien spider 

To take me outside and kill me already.