in movement, we speak of timing. there is a moment when holding the pose no longer deepens the gesture. the illusion is that endurance equals impact. but often, it is in the release. that a more powerful truth arrives.

so too in care. the serpent teaches. she does not stretch endlessly. in many traditions, the snake is reviled as cunning or feared as dangerous. but in other cosmologies, she is sacred. in chinese zodiac, she is the sign of stillness, intelligence, and strategic timing. she waits. she knows when to shed.

in aztec cosmology, quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent, is a god of wind, wisdom, and rebirth. they descend into the underworld to gather bones, and reconstitute life. their knowledge is cyclical and recursive.

these days, i think of my asianness and womanness as psychic weathers i’ve lived through. was way we talk, breathe, smile, coded? is emotional literacy a form of privilege? or is it something else entirely, a gendered, racialized apprenticeship in emotional labor?

when the world does not ask you what you feel but expects you to feel on its behalf, you become an instrument of attunement. sara ahmed writes that some bodies are “affect aliens”. too sensitive. too alert. you learned to regulate your pulse. your body was shaped by the contours of thresholds. this was not privilege. this was labor.

gloria anzaldúa calls it la facultad, the capacity to see in the dark, to sense before knowing. it is what happens to those who live in between. the serpent’s tongue speaks in forked registers: affection and defense, clarity and warning.

audre lorde said, “caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”

and so let it be threatening.