purr

You were young and dumb and for the longest time that was an excuse.
But you can’t be trampled over unless you make yourself a road, or roadkill.
We all have our emotional patterns. You’re a leaver. You’re a leaver like the weakest lion leaves the pride. You struggle, until there is no doubt left about the winner; limping and humiliated, blood on your face, you leave, and from the start both of you knew you were too small for the challenge.
You roar and take on the fight because you don’t admit defeat until you’ve been smashed, neutralized, broken. You roar and believe the sound coming out of your throat, as if the sound itself could change you.
Being brave doesn’t make you strong.
Is that what it means, to be young? To be brave despite the weakness.
Battle after battle you leave, defeated, and battle after battle, infatuated with the sound of the roar, you take on a new fight, neck-biting and back-scratching, and there’s the blood again.
Your face is always wet.
Still, you think if you’re no longer young then you must be wise, or wiser.
You can’t tell.
Fear is infectious and irrevocable. There’s no cure for it.
(You’ve learned the name of the disease of the wet-faced years ago.)
You’re too proud to be prey, but some of us are shaped to be lonely predators. You were born the wrong species. As night comes, your coat is tinted black. Every day, though, the sun rises again, promising a lot and delivering only arid, dry light. The light is inescapable, it reveals all the cowards in their scarred coats.
You smell daylight approaching and pray:
please, please, please, not again.
You could say a lot, words are your weapon of choice. You smoke until your voice is coarse. Words are traps: winning through words is an empty victory, it’s like a trophy for a competition no-one’s taking part in, unrecognized and useless. The world is made up of flesh and blood, and flesh and blood alone are the truth. That much you have learnt.
On the back of your mind, you fantasize your words could become spells, you daydream of yourself as the witch, not the cat. Magic spells, whispers, enchantments.
Lick: your coat is furry and scarred.
I have seen in you everything I think beauty is made of. I asked for tenderness, and you joked: maybe in another life.
I heard I was born with nine. There are five left. This one was already broken, this one still bleeds. I forget and smile, joking about it, while blood escapes through my fingers, soaks my hands in warmth, and I pretend it’s nothing, smiling and terrified. All of these eventually become just scars. A feline backed-up by the pride. Like the sun, I always rise.
Maybe in another life.

