The Tiger’s Bride

 

 

Longing to be free, I unzip my spine, as if shedding a dusty trousseau, a gown unloved and seldom worn. Arms reversed over my head, plucking each vertebra as one might a frozen rose. Like wooden bricks they clatter to the floor. My fugitive self free to roam. 

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Neither hero nor villain, my time mispent. My nights at the circus, my days a shadow dance. Tutored by wise children, my home a magic toyshop or a bloody chamber. 

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Thus un-sleeved I enter the cat’s pelt, complete at last. Inserting one limb at a time, until – hand in glove – I can feel myself flex, sealed within my new pelt. My padded pus-purr feet, my febrile whiskers sampling the air, each filament as sensitive as a sea anemone.

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My backbone a swaying, sauntering tail, like a second shadow off about the town. A chancer on the prowl looking for mischief. My fingers as sharp as any blade, each a retracted stiletto, a jack-knife waiting to be sprung. Examining my claws with their hidden weaponry, so stealthy, so serene, I contemplate an infinite array of possibilities, gazing across a wide surmise. 

 

I clean my newly furred skin with a rasping tongue, feeling the contoured flesh for the first time. My careful ablutions arrested upon the moment by nerves stretched tighter than the sensorium of a shark.  

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Yellow slits for eyes, each narrow iris a doorway into ancient jungle. Focused now upon my prey.

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Upon you.       

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Here, kitty... 

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(In memory of Angela Carter 1940-1992)

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Image used in Twitter posts courtesy of Collette Hunter

@colletteoliviaillustration

​https://www.colletteoliviaillustration.co.uk/

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