I am not afraid of spiders

Grief, in all forms, in all ways, changes you. I am not afraid of spiders—they crawl, and they creep, and they dangle from their long lines of gossamer webbing, and they watch me. I pay them no mind—oftentimes, I let them pass, slide, slip; I keep my hands by my sides. We coexist, the spiders and I, as real animals do.

But in a few very short weeks, I have lost people—a woman I have dearly loved, for always, and although her husband is a poet, I know he’ll allow me this grammatical error just this once, to contain the depth of her and me. A boy, or a man, or something cooler, something that bubbles with condensation where memories I don’t know about left him cold. And myself—a piece of me has become “her,” a girl I no longer know or am.

This has changed me. I am not afraid of spiders—they stare, and they curl, and they scuttle on a multitude of legs, and they supposedly jump all over you while you sleep. Today, tonight, a spider joined me on the bed I slept on as a child and now sleep on as something barely more than that. It stared at me with its minuscule eyes and rubbed its pincers together. Today, tonight, the idea of such close companionship in the wake of such loss, the desire for it, was so strong I almost let it crawl, creep, scuttle, and slip right into my mouth, behind my molars, and into my chest, so its strings of white webbing could make cobwebs where my heart is.