Burning Bright by Marisa Gedgaudas
In my dream, there is a tiger in the water.
A flash of striped orange swimming slow circles in the murky pool at my feet.
The sky is dark, the water darker.
I do not know what the tiger wants but I am fixed in place by fear, fascination, the fury of orange/black/orange.
I turn to find your shelf strewn with old books. Their pages are brimming with drawings, poems, letters. Each book contains all of our memories and your secret stories of me.
I look closer.
They are mostly old stories of mostly a different me. The pages turn and so the stories. I catch my breath and quickly close the books.
I do not want to know the ending.
I must not know the ending.
I turn again.
It's there, in the tiger's teeth.