It sped from behind stacked shoes on the wooden rack
with my hesitant stomp and its swift sprint
I cracked four of its matchstick hairy legs
the sound like crushed crisps
it contracted quickly into itself, like closed fingers,
like the shrinking pupil of an eye
lying there, playing dead - this mastermind
turning inside itself – crippled, human in its agony.
I swept it casually with the blue dustpan and brush
hurled it down the kitchen bin, it fell inside the dark
stumbled against rotten apple cores and broken egg shells
the stink of expired cheese and the whiff of decaying meat
caught in dead strands of hair and soiled tissues
the disturbing sound of its saved legs unfolding against foul waste
the goo and reek of old stew, mouldy bread and hamster’s dung
deeper it fell, trying to hang on the slippery folds of the black plastic bag
defeated by grease, slime and muck.
Never again will this opportunistic hunter spin its silk
fiercely gaze into the eyes of its prey, its glands drooling venom
never will it chew off its copulating mate’s head
regurgitate in the mouths of its young a masticated wasp
it’s eight spectacular eyes darken under the grime
dying slowly in my filth.
