Warning.

Large hairy spiders with a thousand eyes live in the shower,

behind the curtain; it’s not their fault.

Steaming water is their nemesis, it makes them panic for their life.

An already short life, spent.

They are our friends, though they don’t see it that way.

I am not a joiner.

I may have done that when I was younger,

but now there is no point.

I shun the confinement of praise,

the obligation to say something nice in return,

like you have nice shoes or you smell like lilacs.

I desire only the people who share small victories of life with me.

It is a fault, that I steal the reward of giving,

and hide from receiving it back.

I shelter myself from having to say, ‘thank you’.

A selfish thing, but we are just a blink and then gone.

Who will know us in a hundred years.

I could have been a spider, hairy and bulbous.

A web master, with a thousand eyes, that sees everything.

Eight spiny legs that let me flee from the fly,

that wants to eat me.

But I am not.