just

a tormenting word

The spider is crawling up my leg, hacking down every hair that crosses its path making sure that I can feel it. I quickly shoot up as if I have just been awaken from a nightmare and search my leg for the spider that was tormenting me to find it was just sweat. I lie back down in shorts and a bra, it is far too hot for a shirt right now, and I continue to attempt to ground myself surrounded by every thing that I consider a comfort item, my phone on the other hand is thrown across the room I do not want to see it ever again.

I think …

This time it is a real spider, I see it, I can touch it if I wish. At first I let it breathe. I watch it, as it crawls from my leg onto my duvet. I could give every thing to this spider, possibly a life that I dream of myself if I just let it go. It continues to explore the space and take in its new home. The home provided by me, that I chose to bestow onto this spider instead of determining that the last view this spider would have would be the bruises on my knees. I cannot let go.

A hand slams down … no … fingers shaped like a pair of tweezers use all twelve muscles available to them to take their aim. one second. that is how long it takes for these fingers, now detached from the brain, to end what could have been. The legs, my legs, that once inhabited the spider shift, they swing over the edge of the plank and jump. The journey down, into the bathroom, is short, fifteen seconds at best. The water is interrupted from its peaceful flow but not by the entirety of the destructor just the fingers, at first, just the remnants of the potential existence. Despite only two fingers being used for this unimaginable act both hands are washed thoroughly of the deed.

‘All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand’

It is forgotten. It really is. It is forgotten until the cycle repeats, until I get the familiar feeling of a spider crawling on my leg whether it is actually there or not. I am tormented by this feeling. A common misconception is that there is relief to be felt upon the discovery that there is no spider, that to find just sweat dripping down my leg would release me from this peril. However, this does the opposite. My anxiety is worsened from the idea that maybe I missed it, maybe it is already in my sheets, maybe it is creating the life without my decision to let it. Maybe I have lost the little control that I had. Would I prefer the spider or the sweat? The answer is that it does not matter. Either way I am still sat in my room on the same sheets that may have been touched by a spider or may not have been. The only difference is that in one of these scenarios I leave for thirty seconds and my hands become clean of anything that has tainted them since the last time they were cleansed. In the end I am in my shorts and in my bra because it is still too hot and I just … I just cannot let go.