The Viper

I would carry it, you said,
so long as I could survive its strikes.
And you did survive.
Look at your hands — the small white scars,
the places where the venom went in
and did not finish you.

You learned to walk with it coiled at your chest,
learned to sleep with one eye open,
learned to call the swelling strength.
But beloved, listen:
survival is not the same as living.

The man who carries a viper becomes, in time,
a man who is carried by it.
His arms forget any other shape.
His house grows small around the snake.
His friends learn not to embrace him.

You were not born to be a sheath.
You were born to be a field the wind moves through,
a window the light comes into,
a hand that could hold, if it chose, a sparrow.

Set it down.
Not because you are weak —
you have proven, past all proving, that you are not —
but because the proving is finished.

The viper does not love you.
It has never loved you.
It only knows the warmth of your chest
and mistakes it for home.