Monday, November 10, 2008

Gnat and Spider

Seaweed soap with 43 trace minerals and it's dark brown. Moldy ceiling, dotted. Pine sol isn't going to kill the mold. You have to use bleach for that. I'm not a gnat anymore and I never will be again. I always look up to make sure that daddy long legs isn't above me or in the corner of the shower. When it gets steamy in the bathroom he likes to stretch and move around. Taunting me...daring me to shut my eyes and rinse my hair. Bigger, fuzzier spiders don't bother me as much as he does. But I am not a gnat. He cannot even penetrate my outer layer of skin with his tiny row of teeth. He is still there and comes back even after Joe kills him for me. Yet, he is disgusted with moisture. He'll move into the center of the shower, perched above my head until I run out with soap in my hair. As I write this in my mind while watching the spider in the corner, jiggling on his web a gnat bites my stomach. To remind me that I am not him. The bite leaves a pin-hole sized lump and a quarter sized red circle around it. Annoyingly itchy but not nearly the size of my human figure. My figure is aging and uneven in color. That spider can't know how he looks and neither can the gnat. New hairs, clippings, teeth cleanings. No gnat, no spider.

1 comment:

William Keckler said...

amazing prose poem.

you're like a seine net pursing closed on so many great dead poets i miss...but then there's you too...

crescit eundo or summat...

but nice.

xo