Tiger at a Tea Party

"You can't take a tiger to a tea party,"
he told me, and indeed he had become
a tiger. "Swear that you won't tell anyone,
not even God, he told me. So I swore.

It was a wild tale, told the day after
his operation. A tale of rescue,
a tale of murder, a tale of escape.
I could almost have believed him, but no,

too outlandish. Somehow, he had become
unhinged. Maybe the anesthesia, maybe
stress of the last months, maybe genetics,
maybe some combination of all these.

Time has passed, weeks, months, years have gone by since
that day when the moon came out into the
light of day and the dazzling sun climbed into
the bed of night. And I have not been the same either.

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