This isn’t a place to call home

illustration of a spider web between bicycle handlebars with sunflowers fading in the background
Art by Kristina Closs

“Mimesis”

My daughter
                        wouldn’t hurt a spider
That had nested
Between her bicycle handles
For two weeks
She waited
Until it left of its own accord

If you tear down the web I said
It will simply know
This isn’t a place to call home
And you’d get to go biking

She said that’s how others
Become refugees isn’t it?

by Fady Joudah (1971-) from Alight

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