Fascination Street

The weight of my foot swung over the trolley track as the coffee shop music grew dim behind us. A gasp. Something eclipsed the ordinary view of one foot after another: a rattlesnake curled in the curve of asphalt & metal. So still…Limp…Dead. I squatted for closer examination, headlights swishing by, entrails leaking like yellow custard. All else intact. Head hidden. I reached out for the baby rattle. She screamed. I shrieked, surprised by my own voice, quickly calm again. Then charged & solid, some sensation of a wrong that must be righted, I picked up the rotting flesh between my fingers – head unfurled, dangling and torn – and took it to the base of a sidewalk mesquite. It crumpled into the dirt & I sniffed Death on my fingertips. Coffee-drinkers at the sidewalk tables took notice after the scream and followed me with slow-moving eyes as I went back in to wash my hands. A day later & I can still smell them.

A friend who barely knows me called. In the streets, he stumbled upon broken necklaces, “jewels” he called them: beads, crosses, smashed pearls. Recovering treasure close to home. The beauty of brokenness found & gathered. He didn’t need the king’s horses or men.

I told him of the snake. He replied with surprising confidence, “Sounds like you’re putting a relationship to rest. A good thing. Probably a man. They’re often snakes.” “Yes,” I said, “And I picked it up in all its stench & put it in a better place, a more friendly funeral pyre.” “Yah, a good thing.” Then, without knowing what he was saying, “His venom can’t touch you anymore.” And all of a sudden, my breath had more space to move. The mountains are shifting.

Fascination or fortitude? Internal strength or external seduction? Ability to transform or inability to let sleeping snakes lie? It’s not either/or anymore. The sentence breaks the rule and starts with “And.” It’s simply alive.

All this is to say: we live-dream-weave our biomythography. Let it be honest & true.