Eve, the garden, the bush, and the snake

Before the year ends, the project will have been completed and the marsh, reclaimed.  Funny that word, "reclaimed"; as if someone had previously taken the land and turned it into watery nests.  How I would have liked to ask where did the previous inhabitants go, now that the humans have "reclaimed" the land.  The frogs, the crickets, the snakes, among others.  Around the same time last year, I found a snake close to the window, looking in.  It was light green, no thicker than my finger, and had climbed its way up the bush.  Displaced, did it want to come in?

Some nights ago, a cricket found its way in the bedroom.  I let it go. 

The snake, a man killed it with a stone and placed its body in an empty liquor bottle.  Like a prize.  He later showed it off to anyone who cared to look.

One friend, he lives alone with a tely, his father's urn, and a gecko.  He said:  one night, the gecko was nowhere to be found; and the house felt deserted.

I told him there is The Book of Chameleons by Jose Eduardo Agualusa, where there is just a man like him; and a gecko living with the man.  And the gecko, in its previous life, was Jorge Luis Borges, the author my friend most admire. 

The road work for this project is nearly done.  A number of men already doing the road humps and the yellow and black stripes.  If one doesn't care to look, it is easy to mistake this place was never once a marsh.   

Instead of cutting the bush by the window, I let it grow.  And in spite of what might be better ideas, I let open all the house windows.  Sometimes, in the wee hours of early morning, I come downstairs and wonder what would I do: when I open the door and see a snake lying, waiting for me.