Touchpoints

By Cecilia Kennedy

 

Underneath my plate of spaghetti, I find a coral snake, coiled and ready to strike. It’s edging up against the fork, the knife, between the point and the blade. I know it’s venomous, but its bite is rarely lethal, so I leave it be.

However, I won’t dare touch it. Instead, I let it uncoil and slither around my house. Sometimes, I find it under the hard slats of the bed, and I dream of kite strings and rainbow dragon tails that swish and sway on a warm breeze.

Sometimes, I find the snake along the ledge of the tub, made brighter by ribbons of color, breathing in scaly rhythms. My visitor is growing on me. It adds a touch of something I didn’t know I needed. It feeds me, fills me up, makes this place seem not so empty, as it gathers itself in a wavy curve near the straight line of foot.

It’s not until I find it all shriveled, near the washer/dryer in the basement that I recognize—how out of touch my whole world seems. How I should have reached out sooner—at least—to feel the cool surface of smoothness, softening even the sharpest of edges.

 

Cecilia Kennedy (she/her) from US taught Spanish and English composition and literature in Ohio for 20 years before moving to Washington state in 2016. She has two short-story collections: Twenty-Four-Hour Shift: Dark Tales from on and off the Clock (DarkWinter Press) and The Places We Haunt (Baxter House Editions).