snake eyes

the field of view is white. flat white. eggshell paint white. not quite searingly bright white.

the snakes are at eye level, and up close, the way you see them in those glass diorama boxes in zoos. there are no boxes here, only snakes.

they glide into view from the left, one snake at a time, but never quite make it to the right.

their scales are shades of yellow and tan, sandy and school-bus and sometimes mahogany. snake-like colors, mostly muted, but never quite right.

their heads are perfect pit viper shapes, moving, moving, looking all around, examining the corners and walls of the boxes that aren't there.

if their eyes were azaleas, they'd be of otamafu variegation, in shades of fuschia, magenta, and post-it note hot pink.

emanating from the iris of the closest eye is an n-scale model train, of lithographed tin, racing outward at right angles to the direction the snake is looking, rolling faster, thundering silently on photon tracks, till it becomes the size of the prototype it was modeled on.