by Mary Honaker
I try to reel in parts of who I was, but they are attached to me by filaments of spider webs. The web disintegrates at a touch, and I am no one.
The web gleams at a certain angle of light — once a year the sun strikes it right — and I am a whole being again.
The web of my illness wraps around me. I am spun around and around. I am caught. Now my life will be drained.
The web of my relationships was strung between two trees: independence and wellness. A deer walked through it one day, shook the tangle off his horns.
Now, horizon to horizon my life is empty. The buck walks over a hill and disappears into the dapple of forest.
Everything in life is as fragile as a spider’s web. You don’t believe me, but illness has taught me some truths.
The truths are not worth the learning of them.
A web takes up a small space. It belongs to the spider. My life takes up a small space. It, too, belongs to the spider.
About the Author:
Mary Ann Honaker is the author of Becoming Persephone (Third Lung Press, 2019), and Whichever Way the Moon (Main Street Rag, 2023) along with the chapbooks It Will Happen Like This (YesNo Press, 2015) and Gwen and the Big Nothing (The Orchard Street Press, 2020). Her poems have appeared in Bear Review, JMWW, Juked, Little Patuxent Review, Rattle.com, Solstice, Sweet Tree Review, and elsewhere. She currently lives in Beckley, West Virginia.