companion, but I was only
a hungry animal dragged
unwillingly into the brawl
of the ocean.
You looked at me through
your dread and
I looked at you through
the lens of starvation.
But both of us had to
act beyond our insticts-
So the raft became the
ground for a negotiation
between us.
The distance we maintained
as a measure of survival,
turned into mutual respect
and somewhere between
salt and hunger, we stopped
being boy and beast.
And through blind storms
and mad sun,
You fed me with your
trembling hands and I tried
offer you purpose by simply
being there.
I've heard your sobbing
beneath the waves,
the way you whispered
to gods like a child writing
letters to an empty sky.
I never tried to respond.
not because I don't have a
heart. Because Tigers don't
know how to console.
But when the land arrived,
and the jungle called me in
the oldest language I knew,
My predatory insticts were back.
So tell me Pi, whether
saying you goodbye was
important or grabbing your
neck against my will?
And because somewhere
inside my animal heart,
I could not bear to make
a meal of the only witness
to my survival, I walked away.
Not out of indifference,
But because instinct is older
than gratitude.