Spider

He sits in the corner of the kitchen window and waits patiently. He’s been there for months and I feel like we have an understanding. When I come downstairs in the morning, ready for my cup of tea, my egg, an avocado perhaps, he is there and his threads span half the window and across the cupboard. I break an anchoring line to get to a plate. The web collapses up into its stronger half. Filaments float and flap in the drafty room of our old house. 

The spider stays huddled in the corner at first but soon ventures out to assess the situation. Is it a trapped fly or vandalism? Sometimes I feel bad and stick a slow moving fruit fly onto the web. I feed you, you help me, I say to him, mumbling at the end, just watch your boundaries sir; the dishes will not be bound in by your handiwork. 

He sits in the corner day after day and I wonder what he thinks of us. His many eyes watch us shuffle over the sloping floor in the dark of the morning, watch us wash and cook our vegetables, watch us dance to the music of our record player drifting in from the living room. What does he make of our conversations, our silence, our silly songs about bacon and bellies? Does he claim ownership as much as we do over this small plot of land, this mossy crumbling house, this fly-flecked window? 

The thing about Spider is that he never seems offended. He doesn’t take our pushing back at his expanding boundaries personally. He adapts to his newly shaped home and catches winged ones just the same. But every morning I come downstairs and find he has once again stretched out his territory and it hangs on the handle of a teacup or the husk of an ear of popcorn drying on the shelf. He doesn’t apologize like I do. Spider lives in the moment. In his corner in the house we share. He is the closest thing to an indoor pet I have had in ages but there is no cuddling or litter boxes to change. There is symbiosis and wonder, respect and patience. We both want flies dead, we both get what we want.