The Serpent and the Suns

"I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I've a call."
Sylvia Plath, “Lady Lazarus”

The blood. That is what I remember most. The thick blood that curled out of my flesh like an eager worm. Marinating in the fluid. The fat, twisted clot that coiled around my legs like vines of ivy. That serpent whose name I still can not recall, but whose foul breath I could never forget. Aching as though the moist earth would be its salvation, it crept along the smoothness of my thigh, the curve of my calf. Still farther, until it reached the still of the earth, rooting my being to eternity.

The canyon, carved deep by the hands of time, spilled rivers of life. Salvation, a salvation cast down to savages, fed nourishment into the canyon. Thus, merriment could fill the void in nature. Thus, life could rise up from the riverbeds and beauty could inherit all that was once the territory of agony.

I, finding sanctuary in the canyon, bed down each night in the comfort of the rippling river. I fashioned a blindfold of leaves. I drank only of the river. I ate only of the fish that swam inside.

But the serpent, knowing all to well of my dependence on the river, would spatter spit and venom in my face each night. While I slept, I dreamt of my river flowing into tributaries that would eventually meet a red sea. A sea where the horizon always burned bright with the setting of three suns. Where creatures, nearly unimaginable to myself, would bubble about on the surface like bees on pollen. I dreamt that in this sea, all rivers would be forgiven for their birth upon land.

Hence, in my delusion, I devised a plan to travel my river. Not in dreams. Not where reason was victim to whimsical flights of fancy. No, I made voyage for this grand sea with a true pulse pumping at my wrists and neck. In that moment, I no longer made my dependence on the canyon. Instead, I fed upon the rapids and the sound of river weeds bowing in the breeze.

Upon the fifth day of my travels, I heard a gull squawking high atop the wind. Trembling, I stretched my sight as far I could. There, burning brighter than a billion lit candle wicks, I saw the three suns begin to merge with the hazy horizon. My heart, beating rhythms I had never known, ached at the beauty of those setting suns. The heat began to burn my retinas blind, and caused my saliva to bubble and my blood to churn. Straight ahead, stretched out surely for infinity, was my red sea. I wanted to burn. Lost in its fury. Devoured by its warmth.

But, as I opened my mouth to accept the triad of light into my belly, I felt a sting like the chill of snow. Gasping, my eyes left the perfection of those three setting suns, and turned instead, to my left ankle. Coiled round my leg, the serpent sucked at my flesh. His head, wilting in the molten heat of the fierce suns, began to burst and spill pus.

And, I, feeling faint from the venom of my oppressor, tumbled swiftly into the churning, crimson sea.