Snake
Me and Snake talk about you every day. I can’t wait to see your face, and he tells me he feels the same. We lie awake for hours on the quilt you left behind, our bodies tangled together to create our best impression of you and me. Mornings, we speak in soft tones about the time the furnace broke and you let Snake sleep between us, leeching heat from our warm-blooded legs and hips and arms.
That was when I knew you loved us. Snake says he’s not so sure.
The Illustrated Book of Snake Care says that living with a reptile is a responsibility that can become an adventure. It also says that all creatures require the security of a routine. It was unsettling, waking up without you, staring at the blank spaces where you used to be.
Our initial reactions were irrational. We exfoliated frantically in a vain attempt to eliminate every shred of skin we’d worn before you left. This was Snake’s idea. He left hollow, papery shells of himself draped down the stairs like forgotten streamers. I exhausted three loofahs. Then, since our new skins were pink and raw, we spent a long, dark week curled up in the cold belly of our bathtub, only moving to twist the shower knob on and off. With each twist, the ancient pipes rattled behind the tiles like thousands of mice in wheels.
When I told Snake we’d better wait and see if you came home on your own–a wish at best, purely to pacify–he unhinged his jaws around a bar of moisturizing soap in desperate protest. It took an hour to detach him. Afterwards, I drank a whole bottle of cooking sherry and tortured myself by tracing and retracing the white spiral of the Vertigo poster you left behind. Ashamed, Snake wound himself into a tight coil beneath the radiator, doing his best to resemble an extension cord.
Those were dark days. I kept the patio blinds drawn so I wouldn’t have to picture you in the backyard, smiling kindly as you lift Snake over the greasy metal track of the screen door, his buttery baby scales glinting citronella yellow as he slithers into the cool absinthe lawn. You were so proud of him back then–slinging him across your shoulders like a scarf whenever you walked down to the gas station, inviting your friends over to marvel as he swallowed pinky mice, roaches, hard-boiled eggs. You probably don’t remember that. I don’t think you want to.
I think you should know that we’re done waiting. Snake says it’s time to go, and I agree. He’s convinced that if we open the toilet tank and climb inside, we can slither through the pipes out into the New Jersey public sewage system. He vows we could track you by scent and navigate the plumbing like a subway, possibly reappearing in your sink or garden hose.
Upon joyous discovery, you’ll gently fold Snake into your new lambskin attaché and tote us into the city streets, past bus stops, through museums and hot dog stands, and finally to your shiny new office building, which you’ll ignore, smiling. We’ll spend hours in Central Park, basking in the sun. We’ll browse ritzy department stores and let Snake slide luxuriously between stacks of silk shirts. In the evenings, we’ll dine on sushi and cannoli and filleted rats.
And in the end, when we’ve finally shed our last skin, I think we’d all fit in a regular-sized coffin, because we’re pretty small, and Snake’s pretty small. And then we could all turn to dust together. That’d be pretty nice.
Baby, we just want to know what changed.
