Tigers

Now, I know why tigers roar. If I could push you at the center of your chest, instant, without reflex, with enough force to push you out of balance. Force equal to what pushed my heart out of balance. Then, I think I might feel like I'd given something back. To reciprocate this jaded anger and this short circuit of rage that has been forced into my body. I work these muscles for you, my arms for your eyes, my shoulders for your mouth. I will make you want this. I'm not even certain passion exists within you. Or if it exists within me. I have fire in my fingers, and my heart is a torch against my rib-cage. Your backdraft blows at the flames in my heart as you walk past. You do not deserve the love I give. In slow motion, a turn of your head to remind me you're still smiling. And in that moment, if we were animals of a different breed, I would lunge for your neck, open mouthed, spitting with the viciousness of a tiger to rip your body apart with claws and give my eyes a rest.

But I smile back, ask how you are and in the time it takes for your condition to slip past your flat teeth, I come to know why tigers roar.

One, two, three.

So I suppose the next step is just to forget you. One, two, three. Erased. Even as I wrote to you, giving the option of disregard, I didn't think you'd use it. I never thought you'd use it. Maybe I caught you by surprise, and maybe I didn't. Maybe you were standing with gun cocked, cross-hairs aimed on my beating chest. And I'm not sure, but maybe, if I forget you, you can forget me. Then you can forget that part of yourself that is the part of me. The surreal bond we share. A likeness that doesn't fit into any simple space, sundered between waking and sleeping. The part of us that is lonely in every crowded room. The part of you that feels alone. The part of me that feels alone. In a sea of noise I turned to feel you speak my language. Everything is foreign, and yet you made me feel like home. And I feel as I felt in a 10,000 piece puzzle; subjectively. I'm pounding incorrect pieces in to the picture, because I have nothing else to work with. I will continue to dig and exhaust myself on broken pieces, damaged pieces and independent pieces, I'm trying. I'm scared. You said, in every situation, you were you. And in the value of your words, you imply that I was not always myself. As if I obliged an alternate version of myself for you, and you alone can warrant all the moments of doubt facing the mirror. There was a desire for something to fit you much better than you could have fit me. Because you saw my dignity and commanded change. As if it even required change. That you deserved that from me. I think you're flattering yourself. I was just in love with you.