1. HER WEB
It looks like a wheel of diamonds you said. My eyes moved to the corner of the porch where you had noticed the spider, bigger than any I’d ever seen, finishing a hoop of her web. A barn spider, an orb weaver, you said. Harmless to us, despite the look of her, the size of my palm. Dew from the morning glittered around her as a braid of awe and fear wrapped around me. When you picked me up from the little station in your truck it felt like the start of a film, horror or comedy, and even more so as we pulled onto the long dirt lane leading up to your covered porch. A few miles had passed between this house and the last I had spotted on the road. I was just off the train from the city and couldn’t slow my thoughts to match your quietude. I was out of my element, clean and awkward, unnatural against the copper trees and lack of human sound. On the porch, the wind rose and made a soft rush through the woods around us, moving our hair. I had leaned in closer when the web flickered in the changing air, and my instincts jumped me backwards from the spider, knocking me into your chest. You righted me by the shoulders with both hands and held me there. Your closeness felt sudden and encompassing. The feel of your chest against my back. My nerves, untensing against your solidity. I was alone with you, like I had wanted. Finally, I was sticking to your world. In my memory, I can hear our hearts beating. Cicadas, wind, scurrying. The quiet was so loud, so alive. “Scared?” you asked softly, amused. I shook my head, lying, still looking at the spider but thinking only of you. Maybe it was then that you said a storm must be coming as the sky churned above us.
Maybe then you led me by the hand into the darkening house. I remember, more clearly, the storm itself and how hard it fell against the roof, muting our sounds through the night. I remember the web was still there outside in the morning, holding on by a thread.
2. THE BEE
I’m out walking in the cool, quiet fog somewhere between night and morning. The air ushers fallen leaves along the gutter. The river water makes gentle noises against the timeless stone of the bridge. No one’s awake. It’s a thin time of year, October. Thin and dry, full of space, ready to catch. Every sensation is a spark of kindling against the past and gone. I’m burning with memory on this walk. You knew me when I saw with different eyes and taught me to notice. You used to walk with me at these odd hours, back in our time, remember? Sometimes it made me uneasy, the way you’d take my upper arm to get my attention or turn me towards something. I felt frail, how easily you could move me, or squeeze till I felt my blood pump. Can you even stand it? How the most annoying quirks of the people you love are what you end up missing the most—the special glitches that make them who they are, buzzing across your memory and sticking there. Maybe you wouldn’t like how I’ve changed. Maybe you’d find me crass where I once was innocent. Maybe I’ll always care about you liking me, at least the version of you I keep in mind. The one I’m talking to now, that I could never disappoint. The one walking with me now in the half-light, intangible. The one I turn to now, to point at the bee I’m seeing, dead and twisted up in some fake spider web decor clinging to the bricks of this apartment building.
Poor bee, what a stupid death. I can almost hear the plucky fire of your voice. My eye is twitching as I’m sure the bee twitched, caught and confused in the cottony dark. A lonely, scary death, I’d say. I guess the web matters not for this bee. Synthetic or otherwise, her fate would be much the same. Still, she deserves a better ending. I want a better ending. You were always good company. Maybe you would be proud of me after all. I have no gloss, no mask. I’ve slowed and opened. I hold things better. I’m freeing the dead bee and tucking her into some greenery. Very little scares me now, because everything does, I’d say. I think you’d laugh at that, and we’d keep walking. •
