Black Widow

All day long I've been thinking of you,
kissed red on your belly,

of how I should have moved you—
black exoskeleton and slender legs,
spinning your web and trapezing
above the seam of stucco
and concrete.


Nothing you'd done,
but beauty
and simple purpose
and the legacy of your ancestors,

made me kill you—

made indignant
your innocent form.


To move you,
dead branch in hand,
carefully amidst the moonlight,
past the toddler carried by sleepy parents,

that should have been my design:

To trust you to behave
as you at first trusted me.