Ex-Boyfriend as The Daddy Longlegs in My Bathroom by Carly M. Uebel

I see you on your evening walk past the diner on Ravenswood. From my perch in the empty planter, I watch as you pause to take in a brutal scene: A carton of eggs overturned on the sidewalk to your left, a broken-winged dragonfly to your right. Your softness in the face of ruin suggests that you’ve been hurt before. By the time I arrive at your doorstep, I am certain I can be of use.

When Winter’s end meets the first warm day, I crawl beneath a rubber flap. The whole building moves as if breathing – wood contracting and expanding, never quite the right fit for its container. You push the front door shut with a gentle click, only to return to a door wide open, practically inviting me in. I know not to linger in the space of coffee beans and dried noodles; neither can I greet you sleeping, lest the urge to burrow past the mound of your bottom lip (or any number of tender places) overcome. No, I am bound for a place in the back where wet pearls amass on reflective surfaces – where you massage luxury creams in half-moons around your eyeballs. This is the only space you really examine yourself. For a time, I can protect you.

The comfortable pulse of a soundless fan and your Spotify Daylist make this washroom a fitting home. Outside, I weathered bird beaks and the very midwestern possibility of heavy snow in April. The gift of life with you is in its predictability. I emerge from the shadow of a peeling chipboard cabinet to be witnessed by you, trusting you to understand why I traveled all this way. Your face reveals brief alarm as you gaze cautiously upon me, not expecting the company of an eight-legged freak. Please, I cry out: I’ve come to keep you safe. You loosen and look on, positioning a bleach-stained bath mat over the side of the tub before hitting the lights: Darkness again.

Our greetings become regular. I rest in crevices of tile and porcelain. Cracks in the silicone sealant hint at the weathering of all who dwell here. I’m promised some warmth, and the occasional view of your soapy backside. It is a good deal for now, and you come to count on me. We have an understanding that I will fight off more multi-legged monsters for you, I will feed on any who mean to scare you. And you, you will let me live. You will not entrap me. You acknowledge that I belong here, that I am not some stranger bent on harm. But I cannot touch you: On this, too, we agree.

Sometimes you sing to me. Or because there is no other present, I perceive it is for me. You sing me pleading love songs and I understand that our arrangement is not the first time you’ve thought about attachment. I reveal myself more often, a reminder: Here is a creature that keeps his word. Weeks pass and you notice the waning of centipedes. You smile.

You could surely crush me, and as the threats dry up I come to wonder if you might. The persistent light streaming in through dimpled glass suggests a change of season. You replace serenades with audiobooks about women who leave their husbands. I reach the length of one extensive limb in your direction, half-willing a kind of smothering end. But you forget me in the same way you begin to forget yourself: Less and less time spent noticing.

One day, you narrowly avoid trampling the tiny ovoid of my abdomen in your rush to make the morning meeting. I feed as much on your affection as anything else – in the absence of it, I suspect it is time for me to go. I glance upon reminders of you: An open box of Oral B Dental Floss, flecks of leave-in conditioner congealing on the marble countertop. I know when I leave you’ll notice the change. It’s monster-season and you’re underprepared.

I glide along the dusty wood trim past the room where you sleep, past the dried noodles you should really have used by now. I approach the same rubber flap, which begs to keep me in. I push my weight against the side of it until it gives. And then I am gone.

Outside, the air is warm and inviting. I realize I didn’t require the womb of you so desperately after all. I allow my swollen body to expand, larger now that I am not yours. I flex and fold each limber leg and remember how it feels to dance. The hum of some nearby machine whirs on its tracks, containing inside one hundred possible lovers. I imagine you bewildered and swallowed alive by critters. I smile.