Arachne

As she spoke to him on the phone
he killed spiders. She urged him not to.
She was moving out in four days. Leaving
the legs of rain behind to run the window’s face.
Coming to him in Arizona. Where the wind
made promises of barrenness in the sky
and kept them. But she was pregnant.
It was the abstractness that frightened him.
The thought which had become unreal.
It was Socrates who ruined Athens after all.
Then she asked to stay and he watched
something slide between them, black
and sideways. He did not raise his hand.