OLD HER TIGHT, keep her close, always, always—for prickles and all, she’ll protect you, first on this side, then the next. The ominous prospect of death by snakebite hangs heavy, plausibly, in the desert air; beyond your last exhale, serpents still may strike on the journey to the afterlife, devouring your vital force. Soul incomplete, a second death awaits, more final than the first. And then: nothing. Mortality is big, but eternal void
