Spider Friends
A Free Verse Poem and Story of Abuse
I lived on an estate where the daffodils were never yellow enough
My servants never bought me the best cups of tea
I had long brown hair in plaits and I lived happily
Even when I was demanding of more.
Mummy loved me, daddy did too
I guess once upon a time I had a brother too
But things go wrong as time grows long
And my hair grew too.
It’s not fair of me to say I only wanted
Flowers to grow to my tastes,
I was the kindest girl you could’ve met
If you saw what was inside of me
I would have cut open the world and my heart
If I could save a person from the dark.
But no kid has the intellect to understand what is her best
And understand where she is only human
When a child is vulnerable
There are too many ways it becomes prey
And one day I ran too far from my home
I tripped and fell into a sunlit cave
Made of rock and moss
And one leg laid itself out of the shadows
It was the size of me, hairs dripping but she
Just saw a friend to hold her with its long long hairs
Made of sellotape.
Mum and dad tried their best
When I’d come home
Covered in invisible sweat
And scream for nights to come
But in my head, I was back at the nest
Where there was promise of love when I wanted.
Where they stoked me with their long legs
A child with no qualities was allowed to be happy
But they bit me when I’d come
And after the bruises began to form
When I’d ask why
They’d say we bite all our friends
And if you don’t like it
You belong someone else.
But I had nowhere to go
I can’t just live at home
And nobody else wanted me.
So I fell in poisonous love with a spider couple
And they sucked the blood from my muscles
One by one.
When I got out
My skin was white like an animal carcass bleached by the sun
There was no light in my eyes
There was no weight to my body
If the wind wanted it could blow me away
And I thank it for taking me in
With a face like that
And a shriveled heart you could see as it clung to the skin on my chest
No human entity would ever take me.
When I walked through the streets
Everybody would look at me
But my body was just 3 degrees too cold.
They just want to make you bend to their ways
And I couldn’t stand the temperatures they put me in
In their crowded stadiums where each would take a turn
To be pelted and burned
And each increasing time it was my turn
I became charcoal and ice at the same time.
I didn’t understand why humans wanted to play these games
And why me as the softest I was the easiest to pain
They wanted me as their penned bull
To stab repeatedly for the sake of their human game
They took away my skin, they took away my name.
Along the way I found one human
With colder skin than all of them
Heating up from their flaming instincts
To live and hurt us
When we're together there is a yellow that heats up our sides
It even lasts through night.
The times I let my memories of the spider den
Come back to beat me with doubts again
She made me sleep in a soothing
Salve I could lie on my face
Give it a glow that humans make
But my heart beneath my skin
Still bleeds.
And sometimes when life is getting to those memories
The blood drips from eyes, and I am blind
Sometimes I will hurt you
To survive
The spider webs choking, up my mind
I love you, something the worthless find hard to do
And the bruises from my spider friends
Tell me you want to be with them
And I will end up alone again
And it was to be, that you left in the end
And you are not yellow you are not gold
You are sick and you are not cold.
About the Creator
Jessica Selby
I've been writing poems since I was 13 and this is the first place I've published them. I'm a uni student studying English Lit
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