A snake on New Jersey concrete was severed from its skin, half way down.
Entrails diced and mashed into fine pulp, picture salsa with fresh tomato juice.
Sun reflects off mirrored molt, limestone shells patterned in scaled tessellation.

I hold its damp hide, my hands much smaller than its length. Carry it with me
on my walk home from elementary school.

In a small room in Maharashtra, an elderly with my last name sits catatonic.
She accepts the dogs’ high wails. She accepts the brilliant casino light blurred
by soft Mumbai fog. She accepts the open palm of Yama, Vedic god of departing
Atman, shepard to Samsara. Her son is non-corporeal, mounted to the wall, framed
in dense mahogany. Get it? The kid flatlined twenty years prior.

Return to Jersey. In my backpack: D’Aulaires Book of Greek Myths.

Listen, stitch the skin to viscera, and heat will return. Hydras always come back,
I explain to my mother, healthy roadkill in hand.

I’m saying, remember your helmet when you ride a motorcycle, unless the car
hits below the trachea. For example, her son’s cardiovascular failure. Risk-cost
analysis. Each body is born in convergence of atomic chance. You and I,
rock on the river of entropy.