Your unfinished face always questioned. Nose, mouth, whiskers, ears—why the sudden stop? Your shape held no answers, all larval and pulpy, squirming silent while a mother's tongue sandpapered you lively.
Cerebral flaws sent you spinning, sometimes. Thumped by a table or chair leg, you'd recoil to spin again, again, again.
In the fields, you were rabbit, popcorn snake-hunter, vaulting through the ticklish stroke of high grass, inexplicable tracing of a cold, silent quarry,
cautious struts through craters on the stone wall spine, silver trophy writhing in tooth, twice alive until we'd shrink your breathless world back to a whiskerlength.
I hope vast Africa keeps you well, brave Pegasus, that the warm breath of the savanna fills your tiger heart as you stalk the wild antelopes you will never see.
