I wonder if she’s been trained to know I might be picking up

the drug that keeps me alive

when she walks away from the window, just as I arrive.

Maybe she’s adding some newly filled prescriptions to the bins

for other patients who might show up later…or not.

But maybe she might focus on my Eliquis

instead of taking an unscheduled break in her arduous afternoon.

For I have just noticed a spider web

in the corner of the pick-up window against the red bricked wall.

The grim weaver, a wolf-spider, I think…

hangs there, waiting for some unsuspecting moth, just doing its daily flutter,

to get stuck in the sticky silk.

“Please attend to me!” I cry.

For death comes unexpectedly to all

and I am feeling a sudden affinity

with the doomed.