Limbs

ALAN ATKINS

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I am rapidly being distanced from Rhode Island, flying through the sky at three hundred miles per hour in a pressurized science fiction tube full of aluminum and extensive wiring and coffee makers and an accessory dog wearing a toupee and dress shoes.

 

I learned the word akimbo. Peter with well selected glasses and perfect hair told me it means: having arms and legs all splayed out and tangled. His example was a man and a woman in a bed with limbs akimbo. I praised his vocabulary and he said, he better know that, that's what he majored in. And Amber asked, "You majored in english, or having limbs akimbo?" And he emitted a sly miniature laugh and said, “Both.”

 

Our space tube touches down on Baltimore tarmac. Feeling Dignified and confident, Iron & Wine in my earphones, I forcefully lift myself from my seat to exit the plane with the mindset of Texas and the pace of New York. My seatbelt is still on and it humbles me as it jerks me back into the seat. I remember myself and I smile.

 

Some people see spiders and squish them, some leave the room, others gently take the spider outside. Currently I am a spider-squisher, and I assume I’m in the majority. Some spider-squishers look at the post-squish tissue and others just throw it away without turning it over. If spiders scare you, you don't want to see the tissue, but that same fear compels you to check and make sure you've really killed it.

 

I have a morbid curiosity so I always look. And each spider I kill looks the same, with its limbs akimbo.

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