The Philippine Literature

One night the spiders came, but not as spiders do.
Behind her, where she knew the window trees
Stood stiff and tight as though a storm was set to blow,
She thought she heard the rasping of a thousand knees,
Minute and hairy. When she turned, she saw
The creatures, swarming, wave on wave on wave,
Toward her, unleashing from their eyes the flaw
In her which made her shun, crafty and grave,
The needs so near allied to blood – blood she had tamed.
She screamed. The thin twigs snapped. The spiders
vanished.
In the dawn, blown windward with the window‘s mist,
She saw the fiction that her fears had woven;
Fearing which she shut once more her eyes. And then
She heard – and felt – the shy leaves touch the
windowpane.