How Like My Neighbors I Am

our world...
quiet places, undisturbed stillness
working in my element
I improve my corner of the world,
making it liveable for others

By Pudelek (Marcin Szala) (Own work)
[CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

I weave invisible walls to protect me and mine.

I like to curl up in a nest that I've made.

I like the night hours because things are still and less busy and noisy.

I don't like to be disturbed in my home.

So like my neighbors.

They close doors behind them to shut others out.

They protect their children with walls—seen and unseen.

They block the world out with ear buds, trying to make a corner their own.

They scurry to their jobs, working to make the world a better place for others.

We like dark, quiet, undisturbed boxes.

We spend long periods of time waiting for something to come along.

We avoid sunlight, and awake from our droning stupor in the early morning and evening hours.

In moments when people scare me, in my fear I might seem unattractive, even vicious.

But I am so like them—Why be afraid?

Because they don't see how alike we are. 

My neighbors—so similar to myself—try to kill me. 

So I hide.

—Hairy Wolf Spider

By Thomas Shahan from USA (Eye Arrangement of a Hogna Wolf Spider) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons