Poet’s Statement:

This poem arises from quiet, sustained observation of a garden orb-weaver dismantling its web. I frame that slow act of unmaking alongside the bodily sensation of healing—sutures removed, pattern fading back to blankness—exploring how small, mundane acts hold unspoken memory.

• Listing ID: 39595
• Poetry Author's Name: Monci Ellis Lee
• Poem: For hours today on the window frame,
  I have been watching a garden orb-weaver
  unmake its web.
  
  Its eight legs move like a nurse’s hands
  picking sutures out of my wound.
  That tugging feeling —
  not quite pain, but the sensation of being unstitched.
  
  The silk winds back into the body:
  a reverse creation —
  first the pattern, then the blank.
  
  By dusk, nearly everything is gone.
  Just the anchor lines,
  cradling their shape in the wind,
  though no prey will come.
  
  So when the last strand is reeled in,
  the spider pauses.
  I count to five.
  And now it turns and crawls.
• Poet's Bio: Monci Ellis Lee is a Chinese poet, writer, and operatic vocalist, shortlisted for the Bridport Prize. Working across poetry, non-fiction, and children’s literature, her early children’s literature works have appeared in Chinese journals and newspapers. She focuses on intergenerational memory, bodily experience, and the quiet texture of everyday life. Her work traces unspoken histories through precise observations of the ordinary.

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