You are not human. You know this. You are not human. This is not your body. Your body is Destruction.

This is your hand and it is Her hand.

Northern Black Widow

A spider bit me once. Dave doesn’t believe me when I say it was a Black Widow but I’ve seen them in my old apartment building in the fishbowl, that glass room between that one door and the other, the one that doesn’t require a key and the one that does, and I’ve even seen them on the stairs, making those triangular erratic webs, sparkling or shining over the carpet from the window at the flat between floors, and it isn’t that far a stretch to imagine one or two would make it to my own old apartment not ten feet away. Dave says no, there aren’t Black Widows in Detroit and I remind him that the Northern Black Widow’s environment includes this region and that Northern Black Widows prefer spaces much like the fishbowl of my old apartment building or maybe the stairs or maybe my own old apartment. Dave still says, still, still it probably wasn’t a Black Widow, Northern or not, that bit me because it seems unreasonable. So I show him my hand. The part that is a few shades darker like a stain. I show the line where the color changes for emphasis. The scar and the permanent tic in my wrist. He says, that’s pretty bad but it probably wasn’t a Black Widow spider.