Sarah B Cahalan

This spider liquifies her organs

for her babies to eat

This spider does a little dance

to tell her babies to eat her

The babies will not eat a mother

other than their own

This spider’s babies suck her

insides out from her leg joints

until she shrinks away to nothing

It’s called matriphagy

I scroll Wikipedia while my toddler

nurses away my day:

The world is his spider.

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Sarah B Cahalan writes about art, books, natural history, faith, landscape and human connections in the context of deep time, as well as the layers of places and how those correspond with our own layers as people moving through time and place. She is based in Ohio.