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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 —