The Spider's Sestina

The blank, white orb was at rest in the window, a moonbeam drop;

The spider had marooned it in her web, alone, stranded.

She stared intensely waiting for the movement when it struggled;

Her web was held taut by slender digits, which burned

With anticipation for that tiny quiver that sent her mind reeling in fear;

It was barely even a tickle.

She had loved the orb, her greatest work of sculpture and weaving, until that first tickling

Wriggling movement, that made the sac, which had been clutched so closely, drop

To the floor as she backed away, always watching it, fearfully.

It had inched its way behind her, towed by a silk strand

While her head raged with frustration and terror; she felt her affection burn

And shrivel like paper for the milky ball and its insidious struggling.

Suddenly it began again, a persistent clambering struggle,

And a faint memory began to nudge her mind and tickle

Her thoughts until a sickening feeling slid around her gut, and her hard skin burned.

She began to conspire with herself, as she glared ruefully at the lustrous drop

That strained and pulled against the tensed strands,

And drove her mad with nervous fear.

A hateful noise ran through her mind, provoked by the slithering fear

Which had metastasized from gut to head, and protested the infernal struggling

That had possessed her beloved ball of silken strand.

A thread of thoughts entirely new tickled

And tantalized her palps; her fangs unfolded bearing glistening drops

Of venom that seared and burned.

She lunged out of her nest, in the crevice between windows, and bit down with burning 

Poison, condensed fury, and tore at the papery skin of the orb which trembled with fear.

Her young, little milky spiders fell out into the web, squirming droplets

That squealed and cried as she stamped and bit at them as they struggled.

She caught them all; some crawling up her legs, betrayed by their tickling

Feet and others that were desperately scrambling away on invisible strands.

She cleaned her web, grinding up the bodies of her young, picking them off sticky strands.

A weary relief had settled in her head when suddenly a memory burning

Like lightning jumped through her mind, and a sickening tickle

Filled her gut. It was the recollection that had spawned her fears

Of first waking up, and of munching and crunching food for the first time while her prey struggled

In futility. Screams of pain were drowned by her siblings’ gleeful cries and venom drops.

She had hatched with her siblings, a stumbling, clambering, struggling mass of pearl droplets,

And found their decrepit mother tangled in her own strands, where they fell upon her with tickling

Legs and burning poison as she wailed and screamed in mortal fear.