Underwater Basket Weaving

The roof is leaking, and I am trying to figure out if it means anything. I am sitting on the couch with a math textbook, but the incessant dripping is rather distracting, so instead of working I lean back and look up at the pattern water has smudged on the ceiling. A Rorschach’s blot, magnified. Could be a cloud. Two badgers climbing up a tree. A moth. A spider— Yes, that’s it. A spider. A spider with its legs curled up. Not much grace to it, but the potential spider shape on the ceiling reminds me of a particular large arachnid who makes her home just outside my window. She stretches shining webs across the glass, delicate threads that are so pretty coated in morning dew I refuse to open the window. She moves calmly as she spins, climbing to the top of the window frame, letting out a thread from her spinnerets to descend. When she is finished, she lays her long, jointed legs across two taut strands and waits for some unlucky creature to tangle in her trap. She weaves a new web every night, except when it’s raining. Like it’s been raining for the last week, which is why my roof is leaking and why I got into an argument with Alexandria about the smelly wet socks she left on the floor, which is why she’s been eating lunch with Laurie the Marxist From Business Class for the past few days. Alexandria is an arachnophobe with no appreciation for pretty things, and I miss her, but neither of us wants to apologize yet. We can wait. We’re almost as patient as spiders and additionally much more passive-aggressive. The splotch on the ceiling could also be a flower. I consider if it has five petals or three and whether or not there’s a spider nestled in its center. Rainwater drips from the smudge into a bucket I’ve placed beneath it. The roof is leaking, and I don’t know how I am going to fix it. So I listen to the water fall. Soft impacts, like a grasshopper drunk with night thudding against my window, tangling in the web, breaking shimmering strands before it is neatly contained in a sock of suffocating silk.