I visit your grandparents’ village and you point out the house of the gay boy who boiled a snake. He caught it up at the reservoir, the only one of the year and boiled it to get down to its bones. Your grandparents’ wedding portrait looks out at me sternly while I drink cold soup and I ask if you want to FaceTime my hot older girlfriend so we all know what’s going on here. You bring me to a barbecue dressed in my workmen’s overalls only to find that everyone in the village has matching monogrammed overalls too, so I fit right in even though the gay boy who boiled the snake isn’t there. I wear red silk and you tell me you’ll never forget a thing and your siblings can probably hear you moaning bent over the kitchen counter next to the empty broken fridge. You tell me your old name at the boulder that threatens to fall and crush the village and I wear your sweatshirt that says Fuck Your Binary because that’s who we are now. When you jump into the frigid reservoir you call out swear words in English and your twin sister who looks nothing like you watches us gasp for air. I think I told you my joke that there are no snakes in Spain but maybe I haven’t yet. I get trapped inside the train in the city devoted to my favorite lesbian saint and you look for help and when a middle aged father pries the train doors open there you are wearing an outfit that looks exactly like mine. I first saw eyes like yours in fourth grade and my girlfriend and I invent a new type of polyamory which we will patent and speak on at workshops all so I can look in your eyes some more. I think about the boiled snake bones of the gay boy when your hot tongue moves on my collarbone and try to forget who I am.

L Scully (they/them) is a queer writer and double Capricorn currently based in Madrid. They are the co-founder and prose editor at Stone of Madness Press. Find them in the ether @LRScully.