Free Spider on My Tongue by T.M. Wright Page B

be anything and everything about myself
    That is the spider on my tongue. My mortal ignorance of you, and, so, my mortal ignorance of myself, which becomes my mortal ignorance of these departed, and my mortal ignorance of now, and tomorrow, and, of course, of yesterday.
    ~ * ~
July 29
     
    My cupboards are as bare as Mother Hubbard's—except for a crowd of various insects—ants, for instance, and silverfish and black beetles. A half dozen other varieties, too. I don't know why they're here. I was taught that insects go after sugar, crumbs, water, vegetation. But the cupboards are only wood and air, now.
    It's possible that these departed, in my little house and in the dim forest around it, draw insects to them. It's possible that insects are attracted to them. Possible that insects see them or smell them, or see and smell them, and find something appetizing about them.
    Now and again, I found insects on Phyllis, especially when she slept. Some of them were like the insects in my cupboards. Some of them were ants and black beetles and an occasional silverfish (when I think about it, I recall that silverfish aren't actually insects [which, by definition, have three body segments and six legs], nor are spiders, which have two body segments and eight legs). I remember I swiped these creatures to the floor when I found them on her naked body (she slept naked always, and often with a smile), and then I squashed them with my foot. Some of the larger insects made quite a noise when they died.
    God, I remember our meals together. She ate everything with gusto, even bread and Jell-O, cucumbers and peas. She ate everything, in fact. She loved sushi, which I detested, and preferred her meat deep red: "There's nothing like eating this, Abner!" she said. "Eating this meat!"
    "I can see that!" I said (I didn't eat much meat, then: I eat none, now).
    "Yes," she said. "It's lovely, eating this meat!" After a few minutes, sometimes ten or fifteen minutes, sometimes longer, she would usually drop the phrase "eating this meat!" and I'd miss it; sometimes, I'd even coax it from her when I hadn't heard it in a while, and she'd usually oblige ("It's lovely, eating this meat!"), though sometimes she'd simply give me a little frown and say, "The meat is done."
    I miss her gusto. I miss her skin, her breasts and her eyes, too. I find that I even miss picking the insects off her sleeping body and killing them on the floor.
    ~ * ~
August 01
     
    It's always like being in a tent in the dark at this dismal house in the dim woods. I've not known anything like it before. I was never a lover of sunlight. I found it obtrusive, even, in a way, maudlin—"A day without (whatever) is like a day without sunshine," people used to tell me. And I'd say , Shit on that! Give me rain and storms and an eternal night.
    Now, this day, I would cheerfully embrace sunlight. I'd stare straight into it with a smile.
    "Abner, you're a depressed person," Phyllis said once. "It's why you love me."
    "No," I told her. "I love you because you're so goddamned lovable."
    "You love me," she said, "because I'm just out of reach, now and always. Surely you know that."
    "But you're not," I said. "I touch you every day."
    And she smiled and said, "Oh Abner, you're not a fool, so why do you say such things?"
    ~ * ~
August 02, morning, early
     
    Sam is here.
    Phyllis is here.
    They're the only ones that matter.
    The others, these departed, don't matter at all. They move through me like hunger pangs. They come and go, come and go. Sooner or later, they'll be somewhere far beyond me.
    Sam and Phyllis keep me company because they're my friends.
    I've asked them to join me for dinner.
    I have no idea what to make.
    I have so little.
    I have only cupboards as bare as Mother Hubbard's.
    No. I believe I have eggs. I have always prepared eggs well. All kinds of eggs. Scrambled and over easy.
    Though it occurs to me now, upon this moment, that I threw the eggs at a window.
    But there is one. One