Black Spider, Purple Grace
by Kris Statler
Arms and legs and shoulders.
Arms and legs and shoulders.
I kiss what is presented to me.
My kiss is black, a spider,
tear drops clinging to the web,
cursing the horse I rode in on.
The spider’s mane spreads on the pillow,
all eight arms waving,
sticky with silky threads, sprawling.
Who knows how many webs?
We weave a worn, rumpled road
right up to the darkness.
A mouth is presented,
and I slap a spider right on there.
It passes from mouth to mouth
to dirty, goddamn mouth,
until it returns,
crawling back into the web.
And then I’m back in my car,
wondering what the hell just happened.
I was a child, then a mother,
then the ground you walk on.
I was a girl, then a boy,
then a girl again.
Balancing on a single strand,
one foot in front of the other.
In heels!
It’s the edge of the world
as we know it.
So, I drive straight over the edge,
coloring outside the lines again.
So messy.
So messy am I,
with my arms and legs and shoulders.
With his arms and her legs over their shoulders.
And the spiders.
The steamy, leggy arachnids,
large enough now
to make me remember
what I was worrying about the moment before.
That light can only press the dark.
Full body contact, inch by glorious inch,
can only keep her down just so long.
Remember the stretcher from grace?
We have drawn one in:
Harold’s purple crayon from grace.
Upright again,
I spread the spider-colored web
to cover, comfort, capture,
every word,
every thought,
every goddamn glimmer in the eye,
every long-legged stroll
into and out of my life.
Which begs the question,
who IS this begging here?
Up on their haunches, tongue lolling,
eight eyes to match the eight arms,
reaching out to push my buttons.
Turn me on,
turn me off,
flip the switch,
switch my skin until it stings.
That damn black spider
sinks into my fangs,
and I poison it with purple grace,
hoping it will remember me
when I need it.
Kris Statler currently writes from her semi off-grid tiny home on the island of Maui, where she has lived for over 35 years. She is the author of the Birth on Maui series and serves as a consultant to Pacific Birth Collective, a nonprofit she co-founded. Her work spans a lifetime of lived observation: through birth, motherhood, divorce, grief, love, and the cultural and historical complexity of Hawai‘i. She is currently crafting a poetic memoir that blends personal narrative and verse into a story of transformation.
