When You Kill A Spider In Your Daughter’s Room at Eleven PM

“Mom- there’s a bug!” startles you from your slumber.
So, you stumble out the bed, onto your feet, and make your way to the kitchen first, to get your weapon because toilet paper will not do-the guilt seeps through the thin plies of tissue.

Still squinting, you walk resolutely down the hall to her room.
She points to the corner wall as you fumble for more light and notice
the “bug ” is a spider and you see its size, color, shape, and that its legs are long but it’s not a Daddy-Longlegs, and it’s just sitting there

on the wall…in her room, and you, too sleepy to do the catch and release reserved for daytime spiders, apologize for your murderous action as you push the thicker-picker-upper paper towel against the wall where the intruder crouches

and you feel everything is wrong somehow- in the killing of an
innocently sitting spider, at eleven o clock at night, because
everyone knows, “Thou Shalt Not Kill”, and the words rise within,
like an arachnid ghost hovering, reminding you of words
that spiders don’t know and certainly don’t live by.

Besides, spiders are the good guys, you think to yourself,
then it occurs to you that good guys die, too…
and injustice finds its way into the hearts of everyone.

So, you squeeze that paper towel tight making sure all life is
crushed from within- and every innocent rises in your consciousness,
visions of concentration camps, mothers’ wombs,
and the memory from the news of one nine-year-old girl
shot dead while doing homework on her mamma’s bed after school.

And you think how nothing is fair and life is a game of chess
for some, but some are like the spider on the wall
in your daughter’s room at eleven PM.

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Some of you who have followed my writing may recall this poem. This poem is one I continue to revise. It’s one of my favorite poems that I have penned though somewhat “clunky”. Maybe because it was so vivid as I wrote, and it was still a time when my daughter was alive. It was written in 2015 and published in a local anthology, I shared it also on this blog in 2023. You can find it here: 3rd Annual Anthology