Letter to a Spider
If I am being completely honest (which I usually am, it's a sort of curse) then I must confess that I neither like you nor your species. But, over the past several weeks I have observed your life with a morbid curiosity since you took up residence on the post outside my window.
I misjudged you. Though still terrifying and nightmarish, you aren't the complete monster I presumed of you. You would work tirelessly every morning to repair your web with fastidious dedication, and then…you would wait, still and silent, and with the patience of Job. Your legs outstretched in pairs, making it look as if you only had four, a trick perhaps or was it just more comfortable that way? When your unsuspecting lunch or dinner would come flying into your stringed trap of viscosity, you attacked with lightning speed. This was the part that always disgusted me, I reduced you to a merciless killer. I would watch in horror as you put to death and mummified insect after insect. But I suppose we all have to eat, and just like you, I too feed on things that were once living. I'm just far removed from the killing process. My food comes to me already dead and wrapped. You are the butcher and the diner at your own feast.
As I watched you kill, I began to realize that you are not as merciless as I had presumed. You would complete the process as swiftly as possible and my respect for your kind grew, if only a little. Don't get me wrong though, I'm not inviting you or your family for tea. We still aren't friends. But perhaps I understand you better.
And now after countless sunups and glorious flaming orange and pink ocean sundowns (to which you have had an excellent vantage point by the way), I see that you are dying. Your web has remained in broken disrepair for several days now and you lie in a crumpled heap in the middle of it. Your normally outstretched legs curled inward and sideways. Your body moves only occasionally but it is sharp and spastic as if a convulsion of pain has overtaken it. I am watching you die with what I realize is sadness. You are all alone in your broken web. And I want to tell you that you were not all alone. I watched you and I observed your life. I resisted the urge to smash you, an urge which comes from a very instinctive place I might add. It is almost knee-jerk for me to kill your kind. Your life was short and still and at times, supremely violent. You hung silent above the green grass where my children run barefoot and laughing. We saw the same stars at night, only you saw them with so many more eyes, I wonder what that looked like.
Goodbye little spider.