Spider Night

Dunedin glittering as a red-hot disco ball
and your eyes like a predator sunset. That night,
stuck to each other under floral sheets,

you slap an itch on your neck
that by lamplight turns into a spider,
the mysterious, bulbous contents of its abdomen
smeared across your skin.

The air is as still as the Cold War,
as two world leaders pretending not to eye each other
as their hands hover over nuclear buttons.

I sweep up the streetlights
like white-hot shards of glass – scatter them
in the air over you, still spider-streaked.

The air becomes fractals, cool, and you
are in glittering snow – it’s a white wedding,
ours, and the priest in Christmastide vestments
like a glowing monstrance.

The cathedral is made of sequins,
every saint decked out in stalagmites
and glowworms.

I think these things, you know.
This is how I see you – wiping at your neck
while behind you in the window the city stretches out
like a cat made of jewels.

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Molly Crighton is a Dunedin writer. Her work appears in Landfall, a fine line, Starling, Tarot, takahē and The Cormorant. She placed third in the 2021 Page & Blackmore story competition, was a resident for the 2021 Young Writers Festival, and was a featured poet for 2019’s National Poetry Day.

Instagram: @molly.criFacebook: Molly Crighton