When the stories I tell can change me, I tell them over again

There are three kinds of memory I’d provocatively tell myself if I knew which self to provoke and the provocative part isn’t what they are so much as who they make me There are the personal memories of course like that one of an early crawl with small fingers tugging at shaggy browns as they make for the Siamese who lies purring grays a world away Or another hand much bigger but less sure The temptation this time is maybe hers sitting close but distant and yet it’s more likely mine and where my hand wants to lie and how it wants me to keep it there forever I have to tell it its forever is longer than mine These memories are an always too slippery to hold and I've always let them go where they will There are also cultural memories the kind with lives and lessons they’ve unkindly kept in books but their lessons don’t live within the bindings clapped down with dust to lessen them They escape with each crack and they tiptoe their stories inside me Their stories that root and rise an idyllic garden leafing lush greens with one forbidden tree I’ve bitten its fruit and it's opened my eyes I’ve re-opened them often and what I see changes and I see in these changes there’s a third kind It’s kept deeper Deeper still Too deep to read or know well It’s written within each cell and it tells the same tales with a different head This head much hairier peeks between dense branches at reds suddenly grown sharper and it peeks for me A snake that can’t be so easily hid.