Shanhu Lee

Quietly licked my left ear,

A brown recluse spider. Last night.

His thin legs, soft and vain.

I slept in the roaring hurricane.

So he left a polite little mark,

On my neck. Purple-blue circles grew

Around the bluster, formed a cyclone eye.

In the morning, the storm unrolled

Into a wildfire, which scorched

My neck and my tongue and my feet.

In the midst of falling faint,

I realized:

It was the same sting I had

When I was rejected from Science.