Courante of luminous spider twins,
blind and restless, tasting tremors:
mirror-sisters bound and adrift
on either side of this laddered web,
ordered parallels hitched in the twist
of a crooked, honey-burnished tree.
Hungry limbs strum daedal quavers,
song of the chase as each pursues
the other’s ripples across the planar
divide. A key slipped past the lips:
Houdini kiss, the roles of hunter
and prey transposed in secret between.
This their prison and their escape—
both followed and fled, raptorial dance
informed by slender arachnidan grace,
as filaments plucked by pallid legs
shed brilliant jewels that quickly fade,
all swallowed whole by forest green.
(first appeared in issue 2 of Petrichor Machine)