To start, you trap him in a glass:
he’s stoic while you study his
mismatched, barbed, jackknifed knees,
pincer tails and antennae weeds
all sprouting from a belly-head —
the spindly shape of insect dread.
He fills the space from rim to rim,
that foreign, smudged, thorny thing.
Beneath him the white porcelain
looks soft, almost as hidden skin,
and as you curl closer in,
you wonder if he thinks or cares
that there’s no route from here to there:
no mimicry, nor camouflage,
no leaping trick nor subterfuge—
not anything that he can do,
no pathway to your human heart!