A shriek, the shrill crash of shattered glass,
and a girl, wide-eyed, frozen.
On a throne of mildewed porcelain,
a black spider reposes, easy in her rest.
At the girl’s feet, a splatter of milk
creeps and spreads on the green tile,
tracing chalky streams in grey grouted riverbeds,
pooling around her toes unnoticed.
The spider escaped (they always did).

(Good girls do what they’re told, they told her,
Good girls think of others.
Yolanda knew better than that.
That spider survived because it knew it had only itself,
because she was too timid to trap it.)

Her parlor blazes with color:
emerald satin and golden-bright embroidery,
Fine porcelain for her tea service.
A willow bends to trail its leaves in a pond,
calm in every rosy-red line of it.
The girl, now a woman, looks up as she pours,
Cream muddying the tea for her guest.
He thinks he has her in his web, this fool,
Arrogance in his lazy smile, his loose-limbed sprawl,
a brazen gleam in his eyes,
Which never once check what she pours.
He thinks himself the spider.
Yolanda knows so much better.