String off the Ceiling

There’s this thin white string drifting off the ceiling—

Swinging in the air in a room where such air is nonexistent.
It looks like the broken fragment of a spider web

Meaning that somewhere, a mother spider is mourning for her broken home.

This spider with tears in her eyes must know what it felt like to

Have her home swept away by a tornado
Or any catastrophe

To me, she is human as she watches her home and life break away.

Once, this shard of spider’s thin silk was the door to her magnificent mansion

And she had built it using only her fingers of thread—
Built it for her children

And her life was swept away in a room where air is nonexistent.

Now, somewhere in the crevices of the plaster walls, the mother spider mourns

For the magnificent mansion of her life
And now the only trace of its splendor

Is that white string drifting in the nonexistent air.