Consummation
Spiders are like this. They can’t help it. They take the notion of consummation in a relationship literally. There is nothing malicious about it, just a lack of discrimination. And hunger, of course. If it looks like food, it is food. They do what they do because they can.
She learned the spider’s ways early on, a gift from her mother. Instinctively, she wove a net of her wanting. Sensitive, intuitive, she felt for the slightest movements along her lines. And responded immediately. And bit. A love bite, really. She gave of herself. Now the other knew her need, was immobilized by it. How can anybody retreat, when one is so essential? Dazed, the other did not resist when she extruded threads of her affection, did not even notice that she walked all over the other’s interests, that her advise covered the other’s problems until there was only the tight package of her opinions, containing the other like a prized possession, obscuring individuality, prempting any independent emotion.
Imagine her disbelief when she realized that the bundle of their relationship, so carefully constructed, had turned into a cocoon in which the other slowly, but steadily differentiated, expressing feelings and opinions which she did not share. Imagine her shock and incomprehension when the ties lost their stickiness, when she could not any longer keep the other bound to her emotional world. Imagine her fury when her caustic remarks would not dissolve the other’s determination, when the other would not any longer follow her every lead. Imagine her frustration when she ended up hungry, HUNGRY, after every conversation. Imagine her outrage when her angry stabs opened fissures through which the other escaped. Imagine her pain when the newly emerged butterfly stretched the still-crumbled wings of its own purpose and flew off.
How to comprehend the other’s refusal to be confined within the weave of her needs? Nothing in her life had prepared her for the other’s transformation. After all, she hadn’t changed. Metamorphosis was not part of her nature. The only explanations which made sense to her were rejection and abandonment. Turning her back on the other, she went to search for someone new.
Spiders are like this. They can’t help it. They take the notion of consummation in a relationship literally. There is nothing malicious about it, just a lack of discrimination. And hunger, of course. If it looks like food, it is food. They do what they do because they can.
She learned the spider’s ways early on, a gift from her mother. Instinctively, she wove a net of her wanting. Sensitive, intuitive, she felt for the slightest movements along her lines. And responded immediately. And bit. A love bite, really. She gave of herself. Now the other knew her need, was immobilized by it. How can anybody retreat, when one is so essential? Dazed, the other did not resist when she extruded threads of her affection, did not even notice that she walked all over the other’s interests, that her advise covered the other’s problems until there was only the tight package of her opinions, containing the other like a prized possession, obscuring individuality, prempting any independent emotion.
Imagine her disbelief when she realized that the bundle of their relationship, so carefully constructed, had turned into a cocoon in which the other slowly, but steadily differentiated, expressing feelings and opinions which she did not share. Imagine her shock and incomprehension when the ties lost their stickiness, when she could not any longer keep the other bound to her emotional world. Imagine her fury when her caustic remarks would not dissolve the other’s determination, when the other would not any longer follow her every lead. Imagine her frustration when she ended up hungry, HUNGRY, after every conversation. Imagine her outrage when her angry stabs opened fissures through which the other escaped. Imagine her pain when the newly emerged butterfly stretched the still-crumbled wings of its own purpose and flew off.
How to comprehend the other’s refusal to be confined within the weave of her needs? Nothing in her life had prepared her for the other’s transformation. After all, she hadn’t changed. Metamorphosis was not part of her nature. The only explanations which made sense to her were rejection and abandonment. Turning her back on the other, she went to search for someone new.
Published in Thresholds Literary Journal Fall 2009
