VIPER

Words by Jo Reyes-Boitel
Photography by Rachelle Rodriguez

days and days of silence passing   we were ghosts
wandering from one room to another
searching for someone with the skill to hear us
our anger low to the ground
[ I have had things rolling through my head.
I couldn’t even afford to look at you
for fearI would see the same hurt I myself had no
answer for. Why you always looked to me
to save you I was only now beginning
to question. ]

we are a bonfire well past its celebratory moment
we are two reptiles desperate for a slice of the sun

I turn to ask something
– unimportant now what that question was –
– truly I don’t even remember –
[ I realize now that at this point I wasn’t even
mad anymore – not at you anyway – although
the hurt was still there.
Rather, I felt the tinge of a manufactured life
we had tried so hard to make true.
It was impossible.

Here we were, failing at a life our parents
wanted, that they themselves
couldn’t recreate.]
your response is to call me a viper

Viper
and I think you incredulous, incapable
but then I feel this animal wake
too late to call it back now
no snake returns to slumber once it has stretched its body
and its spine clicks
unwound
here I am
you slink back, knowing
the history of this creature
the possibility of bearing down
giving life to herself

how she swallows her prey whole
her body mimicking its form
until it cannot keep its shape
and gives in to brokenness
name calling as a pathway to truth:
how she carries all of creation
without contradiction,
knowing
beauty may be ridiculed,
altered and skinned
but it will not die