I don’t know how to begin. for a number of reasons. I haven’t chosen a prompt, but I’m chewing on a few. so far, this is a poe that isn’t sure of itself. it’s not sure it’s a poem, will be a poem, would be a poem if it could be, though. it’s really not sure of anything. a spider startled its writer as it scurried across the keyboard. do spiders scurry? scurry seems like a rodent action, or a small animal action, at least. anyway, they were only startled. not afraid. they’re not the type that is afraid of spiders, they just didn’t want to crush the spider as they typed. the first spider they saved this week nearly drowned. the trick to saving a small spider without hurting it is to tickle it and hope that it spits out a thread. (I know how anatomically and semantically inaccurate that was, but this is my technique and my poem and I’ll use whatever words I want). you pick the spider up by its mouth thread and gentle blow them into the wind. the spider will land on all eights, that’s what I’ve heard. no, I just made that up, and I know how ridiculous everything that I’m saying sounds. or at least I have an idea. or I have an idea about how I’m perceived and here’s the thing, I’m tired of having ideas of any kind. and no, I will not elaborate. but I will knock on the wood of the IKEA bedside table next to me. because what if I never had another idea again after saying I was tired of them? who am I without ideas?
[ imagine a long, breathless pause here as the writer becomes painfully aware of their heartbeat ]
image the cold, smooth surface of the IKEA bedside table that they place their right hand on to redirect their sensations and thoughts. now, quickly, quickly, find that one song in your library that you’ve been using to self-soothe for weeks. your last.fm says you’ve scrobbled it times 56. sing along to it as expressively as possible and drink up as much oxygen a you need and feel every vibration in your chest and then, lay back down, having forgotten what you were writing about. and don’t look back at your poem unless you want to go through all that again. you’ve already lost the plot if ever there was one, so take a break.
stare at the ceiling fan for 15 minutes thinking about the last conversation you had in therapy about how the world is not made for people like you. who need lots of quiet and ample space and way more time to play and write poetry and touch cold smooth surfaces and observe delicate things like the pale little turkey tangle frogfruit flowers on the ground in late summer and the bathtub spiders that would certainly drown without your watchful eye and skillful spider saving technique. realize that you have to build into your world the space and support that you need because most people step on the little pale blooms and kill tiny spiders.
self-discovery, scientifically 