As a lawyer with plenty of life experience, my mother should have known that lizards were a bad choice. Lizards are pets you cannot even pet. Touching them opens the risk of salmonella or something more sinister. Picking up…
I am primarily a poet who writes about family and parenting, so while I am no stranger to confronting or sharing the personal, even a 1,000-word limit felt expansive. I used the flash form as a container for “Lessons in Herpetology.” The piece holds a simple memory about my blended family purchasing lizards at Petco, yet it also explores beyond that moment to the larger structure of a formative time in my life.
It can be difficult to write about close relationships because I naturally want to balance honesty with respect for the real people involved. Ultimately, creative nonfiction is not a deposition but an account of lived experience. With this in mind, I approached my topic like a field of study. Herpetology is the branch of zoology concerned with reptiles, and this story hinges on the weirdness of lizards and their needs in captivity. I wanted to explore my family dynamics in a particular era. To do this, I zoomed in on specific details and ultimately pulled back to consider the wider implications.
Stories about my childhood and family come up frequently among my friends, husband, teenage children, and siblings. I once thought that the older I became, the less these anecdotes would matter, but the opposite is true. As I hit certain milestones—such as turning forty, or parenting my own children at the ages I remember being—I find I have additional dimensions to work with. Instead of remaining a random or funny anecdote, my history has deepened my perspective on everything from motherhood and marriage to sandwich-generation dynamics. Time and distance allow me to use writing as a tool to understand and process complexities I might once have overlooked.
KATY LUXEM lives in Salt Lake City. She is a graduate of the creative writing program at University of Washington and has a master’s degree from the University of Utah. Her work is anthologized in Love Is For All Of Us (Hachette, 2025) and has appeared in Rattle, McSweeney’s, SWWIM Every Day, One Art, Poetry Online, and others. She is the author of Until It Is True (Kelsay Books, 2023). Find her on the pickleball court or on Instagram @katyluxem.
