Snake Colour

I shouldn't have found myself there.

Foot, board, nail. Blood on my blue alpargata. The light. The small fragments scatter in the flash of pain. In my retina mixtures of reds, yellows and blue too. A trail in the memory like the fire of a shooting star in the dark.

The incessant noise of the jungle can drive you crazy.

Silence too.

I hear the beasts of Horacio Quiroga whispering in my ear.

My own jungle was at home. A giant leech hidden in the pillow relentlessly sucked the juices out of my mother's brain. Day after day she was losing her mind. One draining of its blood the other filling. You couldn't make out its legs or its shape, just a slow, heavy, dark movement that moved under the white sheet. The half-open mouth let out the patient's exhausted breath. Sweat beaded on his marbled white skin. You could hear the sucking noises of the parasite gorging itself relentlessly, mercilessly.

I walk slowly through the forest. I have no weapons to defend myself, I don't know where I'm going. I'm moving forward, that's all. The stubbornness of survival. I disappear in the density of greens, in the shine of snake skins, in the rustle of leaves. Everything closes around me and swallows me forever.

Saint Jean d'Ilac, May 2020