by Mary Simmons Melody Zimmerman In the summer, in the woods behind Mary’s house, the woods not owned by Mary’s parents, we searched, without her parents, for snakes. When we searched for snakes, we were jungle explorers, and one of us would always die, though we never found any snakes, and sometimes we would touch dead birds, study their dark eyes, touch our lips, take turns laying in the grass. When we laid in the grass, we were no better than the snakes we never found in t