When Jae and I started dating four years ago, she wrote a poem for me that I dearly loved. Actually, I should say she composed it for me, because she never actually wrote it down. I asked her to do it a few times, but after her accident she couldn’t clearly remember it all; she’d occasionally come out with snippets of it, but the whole seemed to elude her. I had given up hope of ever hearing it all again, but last year she started regaining large chunks of lost memory, and after I published “Bird of Prey” (which was inspired by her) she promised she would work on bringing the poem back up into consciousness and writing it down for me. Then on Christmas day, she handed me a little scroll…and there it was, very close to the way I remembered it. Naturally, I asked if I could share it, so here it is; I hope you like it as much as I do even though it isn’t about you.
Snake Mama
She’s got the click-clack of high heels hitting blacktop.
She’s got sarcasm dripping from the edge of her tongue.
She’s got the body of a Venus, and a mind tougher than shoe leather.
She’s got naked pictures of herself floating about the city;
She’s got no problem with that. She curves like the beauty of the open road.
She’s got that edge…you know, that edge? That leather cuffs in the back of
The top drawer of her dresser, unspoken yet well-used kind of edge.
She’s a certain kind of woman, like a Goddess in a Teacup, and
She was born with a flask of rebellion-and-kindness cocktail
Strapped high on her right hip-bone.
She’s armed with words that can wound, and words that may hurt, and
She wields them like band-aids on a battlefield.
She oozes courage when she does that…
She’s a red-lit woman ready to be seen, and
She’s got precious elements of your anatomy tied up and quivering in her fist.
And it’s unlikely you will even try to get them back.
