strings, shapes

When we were three
a spider came to us in our dreams.

He said to me, “Boy. Listen to me.” His voice sounded like eight legs moving across bedsheets. “I am secret. You won't remember me, not for a long time. But you need to listen.” He told me everything about how it would go. “You will break your arm when you are five,” he said. “How?” I said. “In a tree by a lake,” he said. “Which arm?” I said. “Left. Below the elbow,” he said. “Which lake?” I said. He answered me slowly, turning his compound eyes to the moon. “I could tell you, but you won't remember.” I rubbed my arm. My hand was covered in cobwebs. “That's not all,” he said, “not even close.” The old ceiling above my head began to fill with stories, with spiderwebs. “Not everything is permanent. Some things are, but not everything. Not even close,” he said. “This place?” I said. “This place will always be here, but not for you,” he said. The old farmhouse raced in the wind. I imagined it always being, but spider interrupted. “Not like this. It will be abandoned, and the windows will break, and the roof will collapse. Then I will come back, and make it my home.” He told me that I would have trouble with the brake lines in the old red car. He told me that I was going to lose my grandparents, one by one. “I'm not sure I believe that,” I said. “But they will send you things. People. Ideas. Feelings. Just because you lose something, doesn't mean it isn't still somewhere to be found,” he said. One by one, the things he told me have been remembered. The way the mountains looked ahead of me on the highway. The important phone calls. A song that would be the happiest song I've ever heard would also be the saddest, and back again. “What shape is life?”, I asked him. “It's not really a circle, nothing is ever that perfect,” he said. “I build my web where I can, between clotheslines and gutters filled with leaves, where you will walk through it on summer nights... it's never a perfect circle.” I brush spiderwebs from my hair. “I am afraid of you,” I said. “You are much bigger than me,” he said, “even if you are only three.” He was on my shoulder now. “Do not be afraid of me. I am life,” he said. “Hold out your hands,” he said. I held up my palms. The moon was covered by clouds, when the spider jumped into my hands. The window in my room turned to look at the moon, which just then ran free of the clouds. The spider began to spin a web. Between my hands, his thread was silver. “I don't think you are going to catch any flies in here,” I said. “This web is not for that,” he said. I watched, and he spun the secret shape of life, between my hands. “It's not a circle,” I said. “No, it is certainly not,” he said. The web was everything it should be. Nothing more and nothing less. It reflected my sleepy eyes, which would always be blue. “It is time for me to go,” he said. “Would you be so kind as to open the window?” With the web between my hands, I opened the window with my foot. I could hear the old trees settling into the earth under the weight of the stars. “Keep that,” he said, pointing two legs to my web. “It was nice talking to you,” I said. He hummed as he tied a single strand of web to my big toe. “What song is that?” I asked. “When you are older,” was all he said, finishing his knot. And taking the other end, he disappeared out the window of the old farmhouse, into the night.