Second Trimester

In the week your hemlines pull away
from their normal resting places, you say:

I read that the spider first anchors herself
to the five or six points that will hold her house taut.
Steadied in this way, in possession of herself like the blazered,
working moms whose pictures you see online,
she proceeds labyrinthine around the pylons, 
the web growing stronger with each inward lap, 
until she spreads the last, wet film and sets 
her rounded body like a bursting 
centerpiece at the heart of her creation.

That sounds natural, I say as the sun
dips into far floodplains, but you’re not done:

Maybe, though, she doesn’t lay the full foundation
like we’re supposed to. Like an inkjet printer
or a manual tiller, maybe she makes one long line,
and another just beneath it, and another. Suspended between
a soffit and an eave, this web might wither 
in the breeze while she labors over it.
But she installs the crosswise fretwork right away,
fusses over details before the thing is even there,
like ordering a painting for the nursery 
while the kumquat in my belly has no liver. 
If it falls apart beneath her, she’ll skulk 
to a different branch or lintel and start again.
It’s only a web, right? Only an intricate flimsy thing
spun in her before anyone could tell?

I try to hold you still. I say spiders were born for this,
have instincts to endure the wind, but you insist:

This spider doesn’t lean like a carpenter 
from the sure floor she just laid. 
It’s not that she’s afraid. All night 
she leaps, dragging her bright untethered rungs.