A gecko can stick upside down to a wall

even after it dies. When its large eyes

and scaly torso stop their bodily functions,

the tiny bristles at the bottom of its feet

still cling like resin on a pine tree.

Naturally, biologists ran experiments.

They watched them grip walls

and hang from ceilings like scaly bats. Like Spiderman.

500,000 bristles with spatula-like endings.

The kind of spatula you told your little brother to stop

licking or he would get salmonella. Sort of.

But they stick to any surface with the force

of Van der Waals, and the surety of science.

After the observations, tests, measurements, the biologists

called in the engineers who scratched the surface

of their heads, shrugged, and developed gecko tape.

The first phase of the experiment attached a small toy

to the edge of a window. You can guess which red and blue

man hung from his fingertips. The same one your brother clutched

while he stared at the screen wide-eyed.

The “authentic gecko force” was humanized,

the samples taken from their regenerating bristles

put in a Petri Dish. Then the breakthrough idea:

what if we could use this for good? An application to medicine

not the cheap tape that we’ll never exchange even to save

the environment. So when your brother

climbed the tree, his hands scratched and scaly,

and clung to the branch by the pads of his fingertips,

Spiderman was nowhere to be found. The points of contact

disintegrated like a young boy’s hope of a superhero.

So, what stitched the Spiderman myth back together?

Gecko glue, of course. Developed to bring together muscles

with the force of biology, the microstructures of nature,

and the shrug of the doctor when he said He’s lucky,

Doesn’t he know he’s only human?