I Am Afraid of Spiders, 2017

I have been bit by a brown recluse twice

that’s not metaphor, that’s math, that’s scar tissue doing arithmetic on my nerves.

Once is accident.

Twice is theology.

I am not afraid of spiders in the National Geographic sense

the elegance, the engineering, the soft genius of eight thoughts moving at once.

I am afraid of the pause before knowing.

The quiet punctuation mark in the corner of the room.

So much depends upon the spider not moving

the white wall holding its breath, the shoe abandoned mid-step

my body remembering before my brain votes yes or no.

Brown recluse, what a name, like a monk that took a vow of secrecy and broke it with venom.

Not loud.

Not dramatic.

Just consequence.

I’ve seen what happens days later.

I’ve seen time rot something small into some holy ring, ruined.

That’s the part people don’t get, fear isn’t the scream, it’s the calendar.

Allen would say I saw God crawling along the baseboard high on darkness and domestic neglect, chanting I will not announce myself, I will not announce myself

and I would believe him because my pulse already does.

William would say it is simply there, the spider, the fear, the body arranging itself around survival like a kitchen reorganized after a fire.

I don’t hate spiders.

I respect them the way you respect weather.

If one appears, I become smaller than I was a moment ago,

which is maybe the truest prayer I know.

To acknowledge how fast the universe can touch you without asking.

So yes, I am afraid of spiders.

Not irrationally.

Historically.