27.11.09

This day last year, I felt how smooth the skin of your back was.

This day last week, I saw a snake slither out on to the freeway. Where I live, with my large growling family with its heart so savage, there are trees so high they hide the sun and long grass with seeds that catch on your skin and end up in our animal’s fur, and we have to cut them out. There are flowers and blossoms that make our noses itchy and our eyes red. There are bright mornings that illuminate the trees that cover the hills. When I am there, I stomp loudly to scare the snakes away.

But I didn’t see a snake there, in the noise, where I thought there might be one. I was alone in my car when I saw it. It slithered and I exclaimed. I looked in my rear view mirror and behind me was a large truck, the kind that carries the trunks of dead trees. The snake carried forward in its sinewy path. I don’t know if it was crushed under the big wheels of that truck. Every time I’ve passed that corner since I’ve forgotten to see if that dead flat snake is there on the side of the road where the bitumen is rough and the colour of rust.

I’ve only seen one snake before, in a car with my first love. I told him not to drive over it, for my mother, who grew up at the foot of the hills, told me that snakes will wrap around the inside of cars and curl there in the warmth and wait. He ridiculed this and told me it was an old wives tale and I wonder all the time if he was right, or if one day I will drive over a snake and get out of my little car and the snake will slither over my feet and bite me when I don’t expect it (that’s if it is at all possible to be surprised by a bite that you have been expecting for so long.)

I came a different way to get here today. On the number plate of the car in front was the two letter name you and only a few others ever call me. I wondered what you’d think if you saw those letters. I don’t think it’d be anything good. You know, I had to throw out the shift I had on that night, because I couldn’t wash out the smell of your house, and you’d ripped the lace. Then, once it was gone, I pretended that it was easy to say goodbye.