Lines

Just as I’m about to take a freight train up my nose, I stop with my head halfway to the rails: a spider is swimming past my face, like Rapunzel descending a single strand of her own hair. Her hindmost pair of legs pays out the line, the next two legs stick straight out for balance & the two pairs of forelegs move in circles, feeling all around for an anchor point. Not here, I say, nudging her silk wake to keep her off the mirror-tray & its two parallel lines of white powder. She reverses course like a yo-yo, heading for my finger. I push the thread a little farther & she severs her connection. Sorry, sister, I mutter as she drops to the floor — a chaos of newspapers — touching down without incident among the headlines.