Onto The Next

Hunger.

A prey’s greatest weakness.

Natural, but devastating.

A life spent, onto the next.

Tell me: Do you starve?

(Drums in the distance, the song of a feast.)

They do.

Starvation, longing, desperation;

All gone unnoticed.

They will only realise too late.

Iron. Steel. Restraints.

Claw marks, growls, whispers and yells.

A beast, they called it.

But she watches, 

And thinks surely they’re mistaken.

It thrashes and tears and kicks and shakes,

And still, she watches.

Breath held, eyes hard, nails biting skin.

Silent.

Natural? Devastating.

Suddenly, she can’t watch.

Everything at once, she experiences, everything Could’ve Been.

A lion, free and chasing the sun,

A clumsy fawn, struggling to her feet.

Bees and their busy hives, 

Sweet and glorious and catastrophically oblivious.

An octopus clinging to a bottle at sea.

(Shelter, or danger?)

Elephants digging for water,

Spiders, mindlessly creating their beautiful, tragic homes.

Do they know their untimely end before it happens?

Everything Could’ve Been.

Everything Has Been.

(Look around.)

She does.

It’s not pretty.

(You know that, you selfish, greedy thing.)

It’s howls and cries and never the good kind, 

And headline news and TVs shut off,

For them: A chase of a lifetime, or really, a chase for a life.

Laughter, smothering. 

Guilt, sickening.

It was never meant to be pretty.

(Don’t you see?)

She doesn’t answer.

The beast can’t.

185 years this house has been standing.

Animals have been surviving much longer,

Struggling more recently.

These lives spent…

Is there a next?

Natural?

No.

But they say it’s a devastating delight to be alive.