Married to the snakeman

Married to the snakeman

Bettina told dramatic stories,
wrote witty, insightful poems
and never let on that she was
married to the snakeman.
After her husband's death
they still slid around her face, body.
Slithered in dreams  nightmares
cold as life/death.
Suffocating...
Sleep elusive in the slink of shadows.
Her life consumed by writing snakes
slow shivering days away,
because even in stifling
humid summers
she feels the chill sizzling skin.
Frozen to the bone.
Some poems are barbed. Viperous.
Others saturated with sunshine
are soporific - sleek and fat.
Only belatedly she realised
that not only did she marry the snakeman
but also the snakes
and was bound, tied to them forever.