The Spider

I know you don't want a poem about a spider. But consider: this morning she rebuilt her entire web for the third time this week. You walked through it on Monday. The wind took it on Wednesday. A leaf— a single, inconsiderate leaf— ruined everything on Thursday. And Friday morning: there she is. Same corner. Same silk. Same insane commitment to a structure that will inevitably be destroyed by something that doesn't even know it exists. That's not stupidity. That's faith. Watch her work. Eight legs moving independently but cooperatively— a one-woman orchestra composing geometry from her own body. The silk is stronger than steel by weight. She makes it inside herself. She is both the factory and the architect and the artist and the trap and the patience that waits at the center of all of it. I killed one once. In the bathroom. With a shoe. Then I read that spiders catch mosquitoes— thousands of them— and I realized she was protecting me and I murdered her because she had too many legs and I had too little information. This poem is an apology. To the spider. To everything I destroyed before I understood it. Rebuild. That's the lesson. When the wind comes, when the foot comes, when the leaf comes— rebuild. Not because the web will last. Because the building is the point.