Windowsill

The spring nobody went out, she kept jumping spiders in clear boxes on the sill, for company.

One evening every one of them hung from a single thread, upside down, not moving,

a row of dropped stitches.

Now there are night cameras, a sharp tone they take up to three seconds longer to answer,

twenty flies let loose in the dark and an extra hour's rest next day. So: asleep. That much is settled.

Behind the front eyes, which stay still, the retinas swivel side to side at nothing in the box,

or something that isn't. Nobody knows. In Bonn, someone switches the light off on her way home, the way you would.