THE TIGER; THE PREY

A confession.

I feel like I’ve been chasing something ever since I can remember. A never ending relay. The weight of the distance stifling, the earth threatening to crumble beneath my feet once I’d dare to catch my breath. I’ve been holding onto the air I have left in my lungs to keep going, keep running, keep swimming. Almost there, some days, I feel like. If only I can reach it, finally, to grasp it in my palms — it. Something I don’t recognize. Something that holds the empty promise of an inhale, the release and the long awaited pour. I don’t know where this chase has led me; the dark, the abyss, the starlit blanket I can only touch from the ripple of my own steps — no right, no wrong, proclivity with no direction. The only answer I know that exists is to continue. For an unknown promise that I don’t know, not aware of.

But is this all an illusion? Is this great pursuit nothing but a shallow salt flat, and I’ve been chasing my own reflection? Are these my own hands holding onto my own body at the bottom of the swaying lake? Is this my shadow running after my own thoughts so I don’t lose myself?

I feel like I’ve been chasing something ever since I can remember, and because of that, I assumed I was the predator hunting my prey — to smother the truth. To quench the hunger. To justify the blood in my hands. But am I really nothing but some lost tiger, fallen prey to its own instincts, blindly following after shadows and drowning from their own selfish wish of chasing the sky?

Can a tiger only be a tiger? Can prey only exist as prey? Are we all just foretold stories from the very beginning – unable to control our nature, our legs that keep chasing, our desire to rip away from the emptiness of existence, from the self?

I know I’ve been chasing something ever since I can remember — but now I wonder if I will decide to continue running when I irrevocably acknowledge the probability that there might be nothing waiting for me once I finally catch onto the truth.

The Tiger; The Prey

2022

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