I stare at a hornet’s nest
through a window
in an air-conditioned room.
Corpses are strewn about
the entrances, paper mache,
dessicated heaps of
chitin candy wrapper
A spider had her way
with the dying,
her luck and patience
rewarded with plump
pikeneers, striped
idiots, hornets
that left home for mud
and detritus
She waits outside
the gates of a dead city,
slowly starving,
her silk architecture
straining with the nest’s
dry erosion
She will never know
that I see her,
at the edge of
the well with no water,
and know who she is
I return to the same
graveyards of my life,
patiently waiting for
my reward, the feeling
to be given back to me
Numb and suspended,
I am diligent in my slow dying
with my sister spider.
Our comfort will be subsumed
into a nothing
In the meantime,
in an air-conditioned room
through a window
I stare at hornet’s nest