Tigers
What are we now but voices
who promise each other a life
neither one can deliver
not for lack of wanting
but wanting won’t make it so
We cling to a vine
at the cliff’s edge.
There are tigers above
and below. Let us love
one another and let go.
who promise each other a life
neither one can deliver
not for lack of wanting
but wanting won’t make it so
We cling to a vine
at the cliff’s edge.
There are tigers above
and below. Let us love
one another and let go.
by Eliza Griswold
Ten simple lines tell the story of what we are now. This is us - clinging to a vine at the cliff's edge, tigers above and below. You holding me in this moment feels like all I've ever missed, wanted or needed. But it's no place to live - on the edge of peril, swinging precariously in mid air with our hearts in our throats. Loving you is the easy part, not even a choice but as necessary to my life as breathing - loving you is not something I can undo, not now, not ever. So I wonder about the letting go - what it might mean. What if we let go together? What if we chose to fall into the unknown? What would that hold for us - certain death maybe or perhaps the tigers are imagined or can be tamed, perhaps we could survive them? Or do we let go of each other, climb back up into our separate lives and face the tigers we know? Or maybe in the letting go, just one of us falls and the other climbs back or stays swinging on the vine. There's a loneliness in that that scares me more than the tigers.
