The spiders in the corners are my guards.
They hang from webs, long legs gripping strands,
sensing every quiver of my nerves.
Somewhere out there are the other rooms
where the lives I might have led are locked
while the many people I might have been
stand in corridors and pound on doors.
My spinning wardens see everything
reflected in four parallel rows of eyes:
three hundred and sixty degrees of loss
that they never let me forget. I am their fly.
Published in Howl.
S.C. Flynn 