Next to the snakes, there is a bear, who you will never see, but only hear.
While you are trying - aimlessly - to unravel yourself from the little snake's anatomy, you finally notice him as a shadow against the window, behind the door & between the sheets.
You also realize the bear has always been there by the offal smell you can never brush out of your throat, but you never see him. & the people who say they have are full of shit, anyway.
Because not only is he invisible, he is quiet & always intentional in his small pin-drop whispers. If you hear him, through a grunt or a grumble, as he seeks out the bile from the pit of your gut as you stand in crowds - or through disjointed & unsettling grinding as he chews the marrow from your loved things as you watch him from a mirror - remember, that he is doing it just for you.
Whatever it is, it's a gift. & anyone who mishears it as anything else might as well be deaf.
Which is only funny or ironic, because the deaf are the only people who hear him loudest & with the most clarity.
When they try to tell us about him, the bear, & all we hear is garbled muck we're trying politely to swim through, we are missing a very important warning.
The deaf are being patient, dealing with patients in denial. They're dealing with the handicapped & they're yelling, "Are you fucking deaf? It's the NOISE you should fear!"
Of course, at this point, people are offended at even being asked if they're dead in the first place.
Those are the same people who are so scared of the silence that they sit in the bear's lap & let him breathe down their necks. The same people who swear they saw him that are full of shit, anyway.
& maybe the deaf choke on the words because they're appalled at the sight, or maybe we can't hear them because our ears are full of rotting honey.
Which, as all blind folk know, is the only thing that'll really shut the bear up, anyway.
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