sorry to the spiders

sorry to the spider i washed down the drain first thing in the morning

i didn’t see you in the shower without my glasses on

by the time i bent down to look at you the hot water curled you up

then you were gone, gone down the drain

in the steaming shower—did you enter the shower

on my hair? i can’t see well, bleary from text and screen and work.

i move about the world by habit, without seeing sometimes.

i apologize to all the spiders i crushed, stomped on, smeared

as they scuttled and ran for cover, as they tried to get away.

none was attacking me and i killed them for no real reason.

your fear of looming death seemed to frighten me tremendously.

sorry to the spider i crushed with a cup, the lip of a cup

you were so fast, so big with your long shiny legs

and so fast your movement was somewhat frightening—lightning—

when i slammed the cup on the bookshelf

you were already halfway escaped of it, it crushed your cephalothorax.

instantly you curled up like a dead hand that would never move no more

and i thought that maybe you were a mother, strong and feminine—

maybe the mother of these tiny baby spiders that sometimes i mistake

for ants, sometimes i have washed them down the sink before i recognize

what i am seeing, and i killed you, crushed like a broken umbrella

upsidedown, but i have been finding your babies in the sinks

and lifting them outside when i can if they will crawl along my finger

or on a corner of a piece of paper.

sorry, spiders, for killing you without even noticing

like the one i found once, when i opened a book

and the spider’s juice stuck exoskeletal parts on the page

like a phrase. i know we share this same house;

i never see the little bugs, flies and larvae that you eat

—thanks for eating them, i don’t want them in my books,

i don’t want them in my cupboards and food containers,

if i see you crawling across the floor of the summer

i will open the door for you, for both of us so we can get out.