Chapter 6 - Mourning

On one pointed, thin branch, a spider’s web swings to the movements of a fading butterfly, a Nymphalis antiopa. Silk has her by the wings, the beautiful brown cape that extends from her body, wide enough to cover an infant’s hand. Her cloak.

She’s not fighting. Why should she? Waiting is much less tiresome and so is loving the breeze and enjoying what little time she has. Hundreds of minutes of her life were spent on the things she needed most, and thinking of this makes her happy. Had she lived any other way, she would have considered herself aimless.

She doesn’t understand why others think of her situation as lamentable. Other butterflies watch her from the safety of another branch, begging her to move. Their wings are broken, some permanently, others not. They are all survivors of the same web, sympathizers who know how to help her. But she will not move. The web caught her fairly, and this is all part of the cycle, and she is nothing if not complacent to the actualities of her life.

Her wings have taken her from flower to flower and from flower to sky. She doesn’t want to lose herself by breaking them.

Oh, how she despises their staring. She was born alone and survived alone, so why should she die with others watching her, waiting for her to lament herself the way they do.

Rain, strong winds and darkness eventually force her observers to flee. And their abandonment marks the beginning of a different feeling inside her. Unease. Droplets of water land on her body. Even if she escaped now, she could not fly.

There are two identical, crescent moons out tonight. She watches them because she can longer see much of anything else, except a crow, who has perched himself on the branch above her. He rests his wet black feathers, but he does not shake them out of respect for the being beneath his branch. He waits as quietly as she does, twists his head to eye the trapped being below him, and calls out into the night when the web around her begins to sway.

Suddenly, she wishes the wind would break her body, tear her from the branch, cast her toward the earth and send her spiraling away from the web. But under the rain, with no wings to help her, she would most likely drown. The rain around her is louder than she has ever known it to be, joining the cry of her crow as the web sways more and more.

Lightning and thunder join them. And she swears, by the lingering beats of her will, that this is her sky’s attempt at pulling from her the strength she knows she doesn’t have. She is too scared to listen to commands, and so she doesn’t. The night grows loud enough, chaotic enough, to deafen.

On one pointed, thin branch, a crow waits for the stillness of a fading butterfly, a Nymphalis antiopa. A spider has her by the wings, and rain lands on the beautiful brown cape that extends from her body, wide enough to cover an infant’s hand. Her cloak.

When I wake up, my phone reads 4:30 AM and the black widow sticker that always falls from the ceiling of my van is lying on the floor next to me.

“S’fucking ridiculous.”

I slap the stupid spider back up where it belongs.