an open letter to the dickhead spiders in my apartment
3 weeks before i move to san francisco
i’d no birds to sing to, or rabbits or mice
so i coaxed the spindly dark things
that skitted around my feet as i cleaned
suggesting they helped
use their lace-webs to mend
cigarette holes in my scarves
burns in the curtains
keep me company like a princess
in an animation from my childhood
at a time when things
were too quiet in that flat
but they did not gather for the dance
just gave me eight-eyed dirty looks:
as though to ask why i’d been in my parents
instead of there with them
where have you been all week
it’s been awfully quiet around here
where did the tall one go
we liked him
so trilling scales just echoed
back from the hollows of
empty bookcases and charity-shop bound
plastic bags of things that
once were precious
their rejection was startling,
it awakened a fury, familiar
i vengefully considered trapping them
under glass tumblers from the disused kitchen
binding them to pyrex prisons
leaving them in the middle of the floor
and by the sofa, and in the bath
for trespassing, being over-entitled
being heartbreakers
here are your crystalline palaces, your majesties
as i lock the door behind me
this house is yours now
i’m leaving for ever, you bastards
this is your house now
xx
griff