What's Caught

In the corner of my bedroom window,

the web has been there for weeks.

Dead insects wrapped in silk,

some fully caught,

their wings mummified,

their bodies curled

like they were trying

to fold themselves

out of existence.

Others only half-stuck,

wings still visible,

still catching the light

when the morning sun

hits the corner just right.

This morning,

something was still moving—

a moth or a small fly,

still struggling,

or maybe just the light

making it look like struggle,

maybe just the way

the sun caught all the trapped bodies

at once,

made them seem alive

when they were already

dead,

already part

of the architecture

of being caught.

I should take it down.

I should wipe it away,

clear the corner,

make space for new

light, new

air.

But instead I watched it,

the way the sun

caught the silk,

the way the trapped insects

looked almost beautiful

in that light,

the way the web had become

a kind of gallery

of small deaths,

of small struggles,

of all the things

that reached for the corner

and couldn't reach back out.

I didn't move.

The web stayed.

The sun kept catching it.

And I stood there,

watching the light

illuminate all the things

that were trapped,

that were dead,

that were part

of the corner now,

the architecture

of something that feeds

on being caught.