Brown Recluse

Melanie Alberts

November 22, 2021

Please don’t hate me,

a spiderling born suddenly

homeless during a summer of rain,

poured out of silk with fifty

sisters, fighting for space on a branch

as your hand hit me—yes, I fanged 

your flesh not because I hate you—

(I have nothing but this precious

salve to slow down a clumsy great 

body like yours, cutting through everything, 

crushing life in a single step) simply put, fear

is born into us, how we turn aside, 

how we must hide—I must leave

this restless weed, born

essentially alone as I was, hatched

during a season of prayed-for rain,

between a hill country highway 

and a service road lined with tents, luscious

cardboard hiding places, breathtaking beauty!

Writer and psychic artist Melanie Alberts works at the University of Texas at Austin. Her non-fiction and poetry have appeared in the Ransom Center Magazine, Just This, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, Wisteria: A Journal of Haiku, Senryu, and Tanka, and other journals. Follow Melanie on Instagram @clair.circles.spirit.art.