IN PRAISE OF THE LEGGED (7/5)

In my family the spider is a friend, one

we bid farewell to with the crunch of its chitin

or the swirl of toilet hurricane, hydrating

the deceased until water eats its last leg. It is only

a way of paying our respects, only a silent prayer

of gratitude to the arachnid: whisper thank you for

feasting on the silverfish and the occasional fleas

in Sparky’s curls, if spiders eat fleas anyway.

If they eat silverfish, anything metallic,

anyway. Once in third grade I found

a pale silverfish asleep at the bottom of my

rice bowl, steamed under the pearly grains;

Mom said it wasn’t there, blamed my

insomnia for making me see things, said I was

hallucinating about food. The truth is,

for a second I saw myself in its long antennae, in

the way it scurried across the table, scales glinting

under the moonlight. Its pill-looking body gleaming,

only wanting to survive and make something

out of life, tragically ending up sandwiched

between porcelain and sticky rice. We moved

out of that house but turns out U-Haul is

Noah’s Ark in disguise because all the critters

came along with us; that is to say, we never

leave ourselves behind in movement; only bring

the outside inside, cup the world in our palms and filter it

through our sinuses to let it all flood out.