Spider Friends

I lived on an estate where the daffodils were never yellow enough

My servants never bought me the best cups of tea

I had long brown hair in plaits and I lived happily

Even when I was demanding of more.

Mummy loved me, daddy did too

I guess once upon a time I had a brother too

But things go wrong as time grows long

And my hair grew too.

It’s not fair of me to say I only wanted

Flowers to grow to my tastes,

I was the kindest girl you could’ve met

If you saw what was inside of me

I would have cut open the world and my heart

If I could save a person from the dark.

But no kid has the intellect to understand what is her best

And understand where she is only human

When a child is vulnerable

There are too many ways it becomes prey

And one day I ran too far from my home

I tripped and fell into a sunlit cave

Made of rock and moss

And one leg laid itself out of the shadows

It was the size of me, hairs dripping but she

Just saw a friend to hold her with its long long hairs

Made of sellotape.

Mum and dad tried their best

When I’d come home

Covered in invisible sweat

And scream for nights to come

But in my head, I was back at the nest

Where there was promise of love when I wanted.

Where they stoked me with their long legs

A child with no qualities was allowed to be happy

But they bit me when I’d come

And after the bruises began to form

When I’d ask why

They’d say we bite all our friends

And if you don’t like it

You belong someone else.

But I had nowhere to go

I can’t just live at home

And nobody else wanted me.

So I fell in poisonous love with a spider couple

And they sucked the blood from my muscles

One by one.

When I got out

My skin was white like an animal carcass bleached by the sun

There was no light in my eyes

There was no weight to my body

If the wind wanted it could blow me away

And I thank it for taking me in

With a face like that

And a shriveled heart you could see as it clung to the skin on my chest

No human entity would ever take me.

When I walked through the streets

Everybody would look at me

But my body was just 3 degrees too cold.

They just want to make you bend to their ways

And I couldn’t stand the temperatures they put me in

In their crowded stadiums where each would take a turn

To be pelted and burned

And each increasing time it was my turn

I became charcoal and ice at the same time.

I didn’t understand why humans wanted to play these games

And why me as the softest I was the easiest to pain

They wanted me as their penned bull

To stab repeatedly for the sake of their human game

They took away my skin, they took away my name.

Along the way I found one human

With colder skin than all of them

Heating up from their flaming instincts

To live and hurt us

When we're together there is a yellow that heats up our sides

It even lasts through night.

The times I let my memories of the spider den

Come back to beat me with doubts again

She made me sleep in a soothing

Salve I could lie on my face

Give it a glow that humans make

But my heart beneath my skin

Still bleeds.

And sometimes when life is getting to those memories

The blood drips from eyes, and I am blind

Sometimes I will hurt you

To survive

The spider webs choking, up my mind

I love you, something the worthless find hard to do

And the bruises from my spider friends

Tell me you want to be with them

And I will end up alone again

And it was to be, that you left in the end

And you are not yellow you are not gold

You are sick and you are not cold.