a walk in Mayfield Park I didn’t see it. The pecan tree branches and tapestries of Spanish moss shadowed the sun’s reflection off the silk stretched across the path. So I crashed right through that delicate trap. Brushing off the invisible string, I continued my walk as a web-home wrecker acquiring a cotton candy shawl. It wasn’t until I stopped rested to grip a live oak’s trunk let its bark ground me that I saw it. The spider, too small to cause concern, had hitched a ride. She shimmied down my arm, over my hand and settled into a new home in the crevices of that bark. I had been her destroyer, but also her bridge.
Lauren Oertel (she/her) is a writer, editor, and community organizer based in Austin, Texas. She is a writing workshop facilitator certified in the Amherst Writers & Artists method. Her work has been published in Black Fox Literary, The Westchester Review, Gemini Magazine, The Sun Magazine, and more. She has been a winner and finalist in poetry, fiction, and nonfiction contests with The Letter Review, Writer’s Digest, Prime Number Magazine, and others. Lauren is the coauthor of the book Inside Out: A Texas Prisons Poetry Story, and her debut full-length poetry collection, Scars & Other Luxuries, is forthcoming with Finishing Line Press in November.
