Archive-name: Bestial/serpentn.txt
Archive-author: 
Archive-title: Serpentine


     My beloved goes where he wills and takes what he wants.  I can
move him from his path, haul him sometimes.  He registers his
displeasure, pitting his strength against mine.  Ultimately he knows
that I can draw him into the light and he allows this though he will
return to cozy blackness when tired of my warmth.  Once I tried to
entice him when he was undecided, tried to make up his mind for him
about his desires.  He is not one to be urged to speed, reminding me
with scars that lingered seven days.  Yet, he took what I offered,
once I allowed him his own time.  He snatched, and held with an
implacable grip as he does to whatever great or small takes his fancy,
awakens his hunger.
     He holds me sometimes in that grip.  His scent is musky, clean.
It surrounds me as he does.  While his hold on me is secure I cannot
disrupt his motions.  He seeks the dark places with his questing touch
sliding light over my skin.  There he hides, reveling in my heat,
resting his weight.  He absorbs my power, now able to brave the light,
ingesting the visible of me with his wide-angle eyes that never need
blink.  Strong, radiant, his coiled grasp loosens, slides, and
tightens; light, tasting taps of his tongue determining his next
movements upon me.
     He cannot care if his actions please me.  I can never know if I
am pleasing to him.  What cares he if the lightest bifurcated flick
upon my inner ear can shiver me almost to unconsciousness?  Watching
him, I can only know the hissing of his anger, the stalk and strike of
his hunt and kill.  His indolent ways veil all other emotion.  Does he
feel bliss, ennui, distaste at my touch?  His face is always the same.
     It is a stunning face, especially in the dim sunset light
reflecting glitter from the black, strokable scales.  I watch it
often through the glass walls of his cage, and I call it mine.  Does
he know what freedom is?  Am I his lover, his servant, or his jailer?
I can remove him from his cage, take him in my hands or let his coils
loop about my neck.  I could set him free in the grass to let him find
his own life, but either my greed or my love prevents it.  I can make
myself believe I have defeated the walls of the cage, feeling the play
of the muscles driving the tension of his slither on my bare skin.  
Against the true chasm separating us, I cannot prevail.
--