The Snake Charmers

When the gardens burn, what is left? The flowers are beautiful, but they are fragile. Even the ancient trees who have heard the whispers of emperors will have their bark burnt and their branches will fall, heavy with the weight of knowing. The only piece that stays unscathed is the deep soil. The thing that is perceived as dirty, the thing no one wants to touch with the fear of blackening their fingernails, the thing that holds the Sun’s warmth with its own blackened fingernails. The soil is so forgiving that despite our heavy footsteps and violence in life, it will be the one thing holding our bodies in death. 

And after the smoke clears, maybe no one will search for the beauty that was lost. The bees will have nothing left to kiss. The birds will have nothing left to sing for. But the one who may return to the soil was the one that never passed judgement. The snakes. The ones with the fangs and venom, who love its warmth and are responsible for the bodies. The ones that can survive the fires because where the beautiful always burn and fragility is always lost, there must be a victor. But God had planted that creature in The Garden with Adam and Eve. That creature knew Manipulation before it knew Time. That creature also knew The Garden better than any other living thing and took advantage of its beauty, twisting it with lies for its own satisfaction. 

Centuries after Eden, churches and cathedrals echoed with mankind cursing Eve’s name. Empires would grow, but the mighty always fall. Babylon would burn, Alexandria would burn; all the beautiful things would burn in reluctance. Relevant lessons were therefore instilled into small children. Books were written and choirs would sing. Priests would spread the truth of their own God’s. It's all we have ever known. The story that binds us all. Trust. Deception. Power. The woman and the snake. Yet we women will never learn. The philosophers and optimists would say that we live and we learn but thus is the human condition. We will never learn because we indulge too much and care too little. Aside from ourselves, we tend not to care at all.  

Past Eden and Babylon and Alexandria were the sand storms of Egypt. The hands of Cleopatra. She is deep in the subconscious of all the women who have come after her. Poised, she was the induction of such power intertwined with femininity. She had a daughter who too was able to withstand the sands. Selene’s beauty would not burn under the Arabic Sun.  But like her mother and the mother of all mothers, Selene's heart would stop due to the venom of the snake. No matter how many hours distanced them, no space in time could prevent this fate. She was buried in the Royal Mausoleum of Mauretania; a place meant for memorial, not burial. When someone is not buried in the soil, they don’t abide by the natural law of things. Maybe that is why she is overlooked in history. Maybe that is why for her and her mother both, their deaths are not as known or questioned as their lives. Because when it comes down to women and snakes, the position of the women is targeted more than the snake’s intention. 

How much space lies between our bones and our skin? No surgeon could tell me. The truth is irrelevant. For what it’s worth, we daughters will never want to escape our mothers’ blood more than our father’s; because Our Father, Who Art in Heaven, created the snake that would doom us all. It is a story that insists on telling itself. 

Us women think ourselves snake charmers. These stories of history distort themselves because once you are faced with your own snake, it doesn’t matter whether it has fangs and venom, there would be no need for them. No use. After all, nothing will bite from the hand that feeds them. You’d want to believe no one hurts those who give them what they want. And what if all the snake wants is to lay in the warmth that is someone’s hand? Is it that simple? In that case, they wouldn’t dare show their teeth. Naivety tied to novelty leads to the inclusion of delusion and the exclusion of truth. I hold the double edged knife. I was taught to not lick knives as a child but then again, where is the thrill in safety? What if the knife, sharp and pointed as it was, dripped with desire guised as vengeance? 

Moreover, we women speak and expect spells to dispel from our open mouths. And so it goes night after night. We are smart enough to not trust snakes, but we are also easily tempted. We speak to the snakes til the morning light threatens to expose our insanity. But while we learn to read the snake’s movements, the snakes learn to read our minds. When snakes are not wild they are forced to entertain. Probably in the hopes of getting close enough to find the weak spots in tender flesh. Then, in the darkness of July, through a mist of absurdist romanticism, the snake will strike and bury its fangs into the skin above our hearts also. Who would we women be if we did not bleed, did not puncture? How else is our light and love meant to be evidenced?

And this is where we introduce reality. What is kinder on the tongue? The purposeful ignorance of the obvious that poses itself as thick, amber honey; the nectar of the Gods? Sweeter than ever but murky and clouded all the same. Or the truth that can't stay behind my teeth? The prophets will speak of one thing, but these old men with beards will never know the severance that comes with cutting off your tongue because you cannot decide. Right. Wrong. Impulse. Chemical. In that liminal space of waiting, I talk to the sky. 

The same sun all of our mothers had seen had now set, and the atmosphere began to reflect my mood. A bird, unrecognisable, had landed not far from where I sat. I was thinking about a snake that always found its way back to me and how the bird wouldn’t understand my temptation to tame it. Yet, if I had told my truth to that nightbird, it would have sacrificed its airborne freedoms, its views of the canopies, its flights across the planes and its stellar song all to wait with me for my snake to return. Sometimes language hinders intention. Sometimes we don’t have to understand to know. One glimpse. The nightbird would wait until we could see the creature in all its broken shadows. Maybe then it would sing of something so far removed from what itself would experience. A fragile lineation of falsetto some would call opera and some would call screaming. The epiphany that I would wait for the snake at all, like I had some sort of tragic point to prove, was disheartening. Could I? Would I? Should I?

This clarity is not light. Clarity is not soft nor sweet. It does not whisper or tiptoe or play with my hair as I drive or run its fingers gently up my spine. It is the punctuative mark of the nervous system. It is the Big Red Button that causes the explosion. No. The implosion. Clarity is the implosion of your prior beliefs. It makes you stand still before it makes you fall to your knees. And once you’re on your knees, you pray. You pray because you think, whose hands are going to help me stand again? 

I have had many moments of clarity. Many moments to pray and become familiar with God's forgiveness. Forgive me. Forgive me. Forgive me. This molecular mortar and pestle is the only way I know how. Forgive me. Forgive me. Forgive me. I was never taught to stand on broken bones. Forgive me. Forgive me. Forgive me. I double knot my shoelaces because I am scared to fall and I double knot my heartstrings because I am scared to fall. Forgive me. Forgive me. Forgive me. Maybe this is the one thing in life we get for free. Maybe the more I say it, the more chance I have of it becoming an incantation of manifestation rather than a scramble of blind hope and desperation. 

To evidence this clarity, the same moon all of The Snake Charmer’s had cried under now glared at me with a familiar disappointment. I had previously expressed my temptation to tame a snake. You cannot. I am aware. And anyone who thinks they can is a fool. I am. A fool. There are no snake tamers, only snake charmers. And the only ones who loved to be charmed more than snakes? Women. I feel sorry about this. A type of burden. But like most women, my apology to my own self is amputated. It only extends so far before it falls like sand in the hourglass of time which is desperate to run out in order to make its point. We will never be satisfied. 

I sit in Winter’s hands. Fingers of icicles and palm lines of ravines. The nightbird is with me still. The broken shadows distort themselves and then there you are. My snake. The nightbird’s screaming starts and almost as soon as it does, its black wings open and it flies off into the moon like an apparition. I am offended by this. The bird’s flight was like a refusal to understand. It is hard to understand. Because when it comes to us and the act of being charmed; who are you to deny me? Who are you to indulge me? Who are we to each other? Who are we at all?

You curl around me and whisper. You like my scent and the way I feel. I like your roughness cast on smooth edges, the way you feel. We lay and intertwine and we don’t belong.

They say curiosity kills the cat, but it’s the carelessness that costs them their nine lives. I knew when I saw you that you would cost me so much more, however. And the testament of time has shown that to be the truth. You cost me everything I once was. You turned me into a snake charmer. You turned me into a fool. And you found your moment to strike. You deadly, dangerous thing. 

Yet, when you bit me, I wasn’t surprised. And, in a way, I didn’t mind the hurt. Because you had hurt me; and I would have withstood anything for you. And the fact it wasn’t just any old hurt. It was the hurt you had intentionally parted onto me. It stung of you and it stung sweet. I loved the feeling of the poison. It warped my world into something unrecognisable and unexpected. My last moments of consciousness were with you. You and your trickery and deception. Pointed teeth and wilted luck. You and your falsities and dreamlands and superstitions and tarot deck foresights. Symbolism, power, quickness and stealth. 

You could’ve shed your skin to be new around me. For me. But I guess snakes don’t appeal to the idea of sacrifice. You don’t bend so much as slither. So I ask God’s forgiveness one last time. Please. Carry me up the stairs. Carry me to my grave. 

And, on my grave, every day, you glide across my headstone and over the leaves and flower petals the storm had left in its wake. Gifts and souvenirs from a traveller who would merely pass through this town. The nightbird would scream in a nearby tree but you would stay silent. Snakes can’t read, but you trace the letters engraved into my stone. ‘The girl who always believed in goodness over evil.’