Arachnophilia | Prem Sylvester

There's a fistful of spiders in my chest    Threadfeet scurrying out of step with my heavings    This should explain the whiteness that runs up my throat    Silk shocks of unknowing    When will I see you next?    Will I see you next?    Questions I never asked    Eggs cluster over my aorta    I see you    See you    The web comes out backwards    I'm running after you every time    Telephone lines too fine to carry the weight of my want    My hands move to the puppetry of eight legs linked ad nauseam    I try to swallow the fur of spiderlegs when I visit    Does this scare you away?    The longer I hold them in, the louder they swarm    the deeper they bury    This is why I stumble when I speak    in rotting tongues    At night, I count out my tenants    by the pleas they eat    Gossamer webs melt between my fingers    turn to resin     my fears never leave my skin    I wrap my heart in them     Why must I pretend I am nothing    if not a labyrinth of forgotten flesh?    If you take a scalpel to my sternum    each spider would escape to dark corners    carrying my atrophied ventricles to its people    a feast of silent teeth    But this is not death    only its pale cousin    so I hold on to you    I don't know how to let go of pain    I don't want to teach my spiders    of the pointe at web's end      

Prem Sylvester is a writer from India who turns into words the ideas he catches a whiff of from time to time. Sometimes people read these words. His work has appeared in Homology Lit, Parentheses Journal, Rabid Oak, Turnpike Magazine, Rising Phoenix Review, and Memoir Mixtapes among other homes.

Twitter: @premsylvester