why she wore black

You always wondered why her clothes echoed a black leopards fur, always accused her of witchery and stuck your suspicion into her chromosomes and never stopped to think why her Cerulean eyes were always down turned, staring into the black abyss of bags ready to catch them when they fell, like the tears you'd except to see on her gaunt cheeks.












Dawn, 7 years old asks,

'mummy, why are spiders black?'

She is not afraid of the 8 long hair-lined legs, nor the circular bodies, the pincers or more-than-normal amount of eyes that set other girls shrieking to cling to their mothers skirts. And besides, her mother’s p.v.c skirts are not within Dawns reach and if she stands at any angle other than zero her mothers red thongs wink provocatively at her.

'Because spiders mummy’s die giving birth' answered the voice that once sung her soprano lullabies, but screamed duets with baritone vocals in her nightmares

'Spiders can’t cry for their mommies, so they turn black to show how much they miss them.'

Digesting this Dawn just nods and echoes 'Because they couldn’t cry.'

For 5 months, 13 days and 4 hours she protected webs from her mum’s occasional drunk attempts at cleaning, scooped spiders out of danger from little girls feet and sought to be the best new mother for the species she could.

















And once you took her ice covered hand and thought your heat would be enough to pass as gloves, she was shaking, her head was down, and her thin cinnamon hair covered her face. You thought to tell her that she should run free like the wild horses, that her hair colour sparked memories in you of, but your lips were turning blue in the cold and you just dragged her into the warm and shoved a hot-chocolate mug in those frozen hands then stormed off without waiting to see her warm up. You missed the smile that would melt your heart and set it beating again. She fetched marshmallows from your cupboards and crushed flakes under black fingernails and sprinkled them onto your carpets in a pattern of the most intricate web you'd ever seen. She was gone by the time you'd come back downstairs and you were left with a huge mess and the word

thank you in the middle of it all.






























The 5th hour dawn tried to be a mummy; a policeman knocked on the door and told her, that her mummy wouldn't be coming back. She cried until her pillow was saturated, until her teddies went limp and couldn't hold her any longer, until she was ready to pass out from dehydration, and then, when she couldn't cry any longer.

She turned black.


























At 15, you watched her irises shatter, you watched her bleed onto concrete, you watched her frail body hit the ground and you ranranranranran the fastest you've ever ran but you couldn't save poor dawn from dying,




Before dawn.







You didn't cry at the funeral. You didn't see the tiny army of spiders create webs on the casket but Dawn did and she smiled, and her smile was the only thing
About her that was never black.