At the edge of the bathroom window,
a spider made its wretched home.
We drowned its toxic body
in toxic spray.
The devil left the thing
in a scream you could only see
then a crumpled ball of beaten flesh
plunged
down the sink
and back to hell.
But it left its kill
- some moth
that now had no one to recall
it was there.
Weeks went by.
We washed our hands
and scrubbed our teeth
but no one cared
to deal
with the miserable corpse
in that useless web.
You'd be forgiven for thinking
the moth had somehow won
- that though it had been caught
then killed,
at least it had survived
the final humiliation.
But what value is there
in being half-mummified?
Its great foe had been taken out
before the covenant was sealed
- the battlefield shamed.
The moth had failed to die with honour
and through no fault of its own.
Now, day after day,
it hangs there by the sink
like an idiot-corpse
as we splash ourselves awake
and carry on.
It just hangs there,
unwanted, ignored
- doomed, even in death,
to suffer life's greatest sting.