The Spider

I sleep in the corners of her room.

In the night, I look upon her soft, sleeping face.

This is when I habitually survive another passing day.

She never liked the cowardly beetles or the pesty flies, always looking to her skin for a place to land.

I carefully hunted, trapping those occurances that stretched her skin in fearful ways.

I see the way she looks at them,

Disgust and condemn.

She's never looked at me.

When the sun shines, I wait and wait for the moment she gazes upon me.

She will know then how I have protected her,

The validation of her small onlooker.

I rest now in my corner.

I always enjoyed watching her wake, what sweetness arises each coming sun.

She dawned from her bed, and there it was.

She looks upon me.

Oh, sweetness!

Look upon your protector's home!

Yes! This is where I lay, removing your annoyances.

And then she does something strange.

Nothing,

Stillness,

Then a shriek, and peak of screech.

What have I done.

I watch her grab her delightful stool to reach for me.

Gazing upon her timeless eyes,

I see a look I know and fear and love and hate.

The same expression I've saved you from.

Why?

And then,

It is the end.

I imagine what she looked like when my strewn, worthless vessel lat still,

crushed,

swollen.

Relief? Pain?

What did her expressions heep?