Webs
These tangled gossamer threads
which you spun around me,
have covered my eyes, so that
every image I see resembles your apparition.
-
Your dark curly hair strangles
my heart like a trussed bird.
And each moment you withhold from eating it,
only tightens my fetters.
-
Your velvety wires have interwoven my body,
so that I can feel your touch,
pushing and pulling against me,
with even the most subtle movement.
-
If only I could hear your silken voice once more,
So that I might wrap it around my ears like a scarf.
Perhaps then, I would not listen to the
entangled suffering, stitched between my every thought.
-
How can it be that your delicate, spiraling
web, that once seemed so light—almost invisible,
has now ensnared me so firmly,
that I must remind my lungs to breathe?
-
Your presence is still stuck to me like
hard candy to a child's teeth,
as I naively chew on the words
I think you would most like to hear.
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Dear God, what can I say?
To make you come back to me,
to have your seductive fangs pierce
through me once again.
-
Yet most sincerely, I only wish
that you had actually wronged me.
You could have strung me along like a spider,
and I would have been the gladdest prey to your refection.
-
Instead, you told me so transparently of your intentions,
that I perhaps barely saw them at all.
-
I knew how short our time together would be.
I knew each of your eight legs;
I loved how they crawled about me in bed.
I knew of your many anxious eyes, and
secretly wished that they would worry about me too.
-
You even warned me about the venom,
which I learned is kept
securely martyred within that
hypnotic hourglass figure.
-
You beautiful, spindly creature.
I know you wouldn't hurt a fly.
You never swatted away my incessant buzzing.
I only pray that you would allow yourself the same kindness.
-
Alas, even this presumed intimacy, fastened
so dearly to my chest, was all along just your web,
and I'm tangling what you left.
You danced with such quiet grace upon that diaphanous quilt,
that I could hardly tell when you were actually gone.
-
Now, alone with your silence,
I can only hear the swarming insecurities,
as they hum, and whirl around me.
Now without your touch, I can only feel their sting.
-
Without realizing, I began hemming
your web into my skin like a cocoon.
So that I could imagine comfort,
like you were still here with me.
-
Please, won't you just become my wretched spider.
Allow me to twist your words,
and to enmesh your image into a wan mosaic,
so that I can immure myself in them.
How could you leave me here,
suspended from my own pale heartstrings.
You knew that only I could knot them into this gnarled mess.
Please, just look at me one last time.
So that you may see my mummified self-loathing as a sacrifice.
-
Please, my dear, ethereal arachnid.
Just let me feign you as a monster.
I only want to pretend just a while longer,
That I have not caught myself in my own web.