I wake up with six limbs and a rock-hard back.
I know what is happening, even though I am averse to existentialism.
In therapy, I tell Vanessa I am incapable of many things, like genuinely enjoying nightclubs or signing long-term rental contracts. I am paralyzed by the absurdity of owning any limbs at all.
Elated by my new form, I quickly scurry into the walls.
I make many six-legged friends. Under the cover of night, we eat tunnels through blocks of cheese and play tricks on the smallest mice.
Vanessa and I start meeting on Zoom. She asks me if I am living my life authentically, and in response I shake my carapace ambiguously. We are finding it increasingly difficult to communicate straightforwardly.
From the walls, I watch everyone I know become older versions of themselves. My bedroom is converted into a reformer Pilates studio. My mother stops setting a fourth place at the dinner table.
After finding me in a glue trap somewhere by the front door, my friends ask me to come home. I tell them I can’t leave, not yet. So many crannies of the walls are still left unexplored, there are still so many silverfish left to flirt with.
My father stumbles but I am too small to catch him. He falls to the level of my compound eyeballs.
When I finally will my arms back to myself, I find I am no longer capable of walking steadily on two legs. Stiff as I am, it is difficult to return to my chair at the dinner table.
Somewhere bizarre between the walls and my family, I set myself a place.
~~~Megan Horsthuis is a Canadian ecologist and MFA candidate in Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia. Her recent wildlife poetry is anthologized by The Dark Mountain Project. They live on stolen xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and səlilwətaɬ land, where they work as an editor for PRISM International magazine. In her free time, she enjoys crouching by tide pools and disappearing into the woods.
