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My Inner Serpent

Written April 11th, 2005.

What do you get when you strip a person of all masks, all facades, all walls? What is the rawest form?

When you take away all of my human words (manipulation) and all of my thick skin and fur (protection) and most of my voice (expression), my human hands (expression/crafting), all of my claws and teeth (defenses)... what the hell remains? What is left of me when you remove the human and lioness?

An albino snake.

There is still venom, and still the ability to live and move, and there is still grace and beauty, and there is a raw quality to everything you handle that lets you know you're touching the core fire--there's no skin or fur between you and flesh. There is a nonaggressive nature, yet the ability to kill if provoked or threatened. There is a slowness to movement--whether to flee or to advance--but there is the ability to wriggle out of any grasp and any situation. There is a startling beauty, but only to those who are open to seeing it from a new angle, and there is unimaginable grace--which can be compromised at any moment by external influences. There is cold-blooded-ness, susceptibility to the world, sensitized to change and atmosphere. There are no more colors, only a shade of white that encompasses all of them and yet is none--and color is emotion.

If you were to handle me at my rawest, most vulnerable moment, you would not be cradling a woman or a feline to your chest--you would be touching a serpent's white-hot scales.