When he was a spider
exuding thread between rocks,
he considered his earlier life as a man
and recalled with objective curiosity the belief
that pleasure, true pleasure, constituted
achievement. “Yes,” he told the fly as he bound it —
“I remember lying in bed in Queens
and watching snow accumulate on the windowsill,
when I didn’t know what I was
or what to kill to be happy.
I’d bike down Northern Boulevard
to the Thai place, thinking of the nights I’d spent
on a woman’s couch. The way we’d talk
about nothing — the foreign exchange student
in her middle school, or the watch
I’d look at in the department store
while my mother tried things on.”
“That was your problem,” said the fly
which looked fearless and elegant now,
no longer even beating its wings.
“You and your whole species.
You tasted the stuff you called
love, and then other draughts
seemed thin and bitter. Better
to do without.” And its eyes glinted
as it extended its palpus
to suck in the toxins that would dissolve it
into bones and fluids overnight.