Miriam Kramer
KOMODO DRAGONS EAT ANIMALS THE SIZE OF WATER BUFFALO
If I could choose my next body after rebirth,
I would be a lizard. This may not be the most linear
path, but healing often isn’t.
Certain lizards, geckos for instance, do not have eyelids.
I tell myself I saw it coming and ignored the danger.
Chameleons communicate through color,
I would be a bright embodiment of threat.
I would come back vibrant, glittering
with warning of my venomous tongue.
I would not remember being the woman
who didn’t fight back, who whispered
her refusal from a throat hindered by rising bile,
as if clutched by a predator’s grasp.
I would not remember the peripheral
sightline of green beer bottles.
For weeks after, I couldn’t call
it rape. I camouflaged myself in softer
language, fastened to self-blame,
spending nights praying to not wake up.
If I came back as a lizard,
I would protect my soft and scaled
belly through autotomy,
I would know my potential to self-amputate,
sacrifice an appendage for preservation,
and my ability to regrow.
I would be fluent in regeneration,
A self-defense outside of fight or flight response.
In trauma therapy, I learned
there is also freeze, submit, and attach.
I would not remember days spent
in bed, clutching my knees to my chest. My own nails
like claws in my shoulders just to feel
connected to myself. If I came back a lizard,
I would not mourn my molted tail
the way I’ve mourned my dignity.
I tell myself if I could have shed a limb
to escape, I would have.
I would come back a lizard, tail-less, but still
intact. True, my regrown tail would lack vertebrae,
but that’s no worse than feeling spineless.
On my bad days, I still call myself
coward instead of survivor.