If I am the king of my jungle

why has such a mouse as you felled me

with such a thorn. I had spikes before you

arrived—long before you showed stars are merely doors to

everything which could be, before I learned that all those doors

shine within your eyes, before you promised to stay by my side and asked me to stay by

yours, even though I knew a mouse could never truly love a lion. Before I learned a sad truth,

howling, that sometimes the sting of

removal is akin to stings of

Replacement. Try as I might to accept such hard

truths we promised we would be spared in each other.

Until my tainted blood leaked to the ground we stand, so now there is only bad blood

between us, a sun on the cusp of horizon lines.

I never wanted this, you say words filled with aid—but there are 93 million miles resting

between you and I, teasing that same aid, but offering

none.

Miles like lightyears, but to I, who revolves around you, stasis in your indifference, time is

anarchic, and my desires make me the lesser.

Why do we do this? How many millions of times have we done this, under different names

in different skins? Have I not learned that it is often best to rend my flesh to shreds,

for I alone know my intentions, something I can not claim to understand in you

,Mouse.

Your hands are perfect for pulling out my flaws but that is mine to do, so maybe it was

wrong to ask for your help.

I was struck, with what can only be called “Lion and the Mouse Syndrome,” in which the aid

you did provide forced my love, some sort of soul linking I was rendered obsequious

made to love you.

Because the sad reality of altruism is it’s the greatest harm we can provide for

each other, illusions of sympathy and empathy. For how am I to know that

when you went to work, removing my thorns you were not,

in fact,

using the shade of my pad to remove your own.

You say you miss our non-beneficial parasitic thing like a new moon misses the sun, how

you have thought of yourself in the wake of my massive footsteps.

Yet, it’s vexing to know that the lion has been caught by the mouse,

who can’t walk without the pain of the absence mouse. The next time we meet

may we be reduced to what we were destined to, seen now to me through all those

doors I held so dear: