A closer inspection of a once-loved speckled-oak desk revealed, attached to what looked like a splintery drawer, a blackened iron handle, which fell off when I touched it.  And when I took to the desk with a rusty hammer, levering my way through years of neglect, the bottom of the drawer fell out and hundreds of baby spiders scattered across the floor, fleeing, their tiny black bodies a blur of disparate, disappearing full stops.     .     .

After the sudden diaspora, a disintegrating pile of papers was all that remained.  I lay on the dusty floor and blew.  The uppermost leaf lifted and floated like a genie’s carpet and words, like the spiders,
were suddenly everywhere.  Filling the air like love.  .  .