I am not an academic,

though I seem to have an intense interest

in knowledge of all sorts.

People mostly,

the things that make up their life stories.

Warning.

Large hairy spiders with a thousand eyes

live in the shower,

behind the curtain.

It’s not their fault.

The nemesis of hot water makes them panic for their life.

A life spent.

They are our friends,

though they don’t necessarily see it that way all the time.

I am not a joiner.

I don’t want to join groups,

I don’t want to go to crowds and tell my story.

I would have done that when I was younger

but now I don’t see the need,

don’t see the point.

Just tell it all, to yourself.

Admiration is uncomfortable,

praise confining,

makes an obligation to say something nice in return,

like you have nice shoes or you smell like lilacs.

I am not a measure of my prizes.

Awards, achievements, victories at the cost of others loss.

I have abandoned all those medals, junked all those trophies.

The only memorabilia I desire are the memories of the people

who gathered together with me

to have some small victory.

It is a fault.

That I find the reward in giving,

that I hide from receiving it back.

I am sheltered from having to say, ‘thank you’.

I know it is a selfish thing.

I would ask to be your friend.

But what is the point?

Time is so fleeting.

We are just a blink and then we are gone.

Nobody will remember us in a hundred years.

You don’t know me

I don’t know you.

There is nothing to say to each other.

I could have been a spider,

hairy and bulbous.

A web master

with a thousand eyes,

to see everything,

and eight spiny legs

that would let me flee from the fly

that wants to eat me.