Fox's origin.

I wrote a story once

Where I am a fox.

Beaten, battered, shattered and bruised;

Stitched back together with the wool of a lamb.

Yet the moral of the story isn't to notice all this -

Not to hate on the fox's cruelty either.

It's to remember the way that the fox was made.

Originally, there wasn't a fox.

Where do you think the wool came from?

The prey was shy and kind,

But the world had played this game before.

We know what happened next;

Think about this as we watch how the fox's traps are made.

Methodically woven out of charred paper cranes

As if from muscle memory -

And strung in the echoes of once beautiful places

Now harsh and cold in their mockery.

Vicious, we see the fox;

Apathetic as prey is caught and maimed.

But their wool reflects mine -

From a time ago.

The fox won't move on.

The fox is trapped, still.

The fox is nimble and learns from experience.

How to survive;

How to breathe;

How to keep going, and tuck away the stray tufts of wool

That reveal the precious, sharp shards of vulnerability;

Somehow existing,

Somehow still beating

This is the starting point,

Ground zero

Where flesh meets stone,

Layered lasagne sheets of iron,

Steel

Titanium.

Brick walls so clearly protecting something.

From sight?

The high ground found, created, built for a reason.

Remember this as the fox snarls

The pain shooting through it's wounds

Unhealed, unrecognised

Hidden until they leave, untold

Fine, fine, fine, fine, fine.

Justify it - the masking

Shatter the porcelain,

It takes little effort, if not the force of a sledgehammer

The strength of a giant,

To coax out the prey,

The thing kept breathing

Kept living

Is it spite?

Is it grit?

Why must it be hate?

Confrontation; the starting point

Born-again for the springtime

Where fur coats are shed

And the snake must hibernate for a season -

That comforting, soothing snake.

The one who watched the fox's back

The one who nursed the fox's wounds.

The one who left at the right time

Keeping the fox growing, learning, living.

The fox is a survivor

But the stream has freshened with the glacier's melting tantrums.

There's force behind it; steadily

Unpredictable, brave, consistent

The perfect reason to drink.

Must the fox show it's wounds

To be seen as a fox come this far?

Must the fox make every choice,

Away from false hope, disappointment proven right?

I, the fox, am irreplaceably unique.

I, the fox, am undeniably brave.

The fox softens it's roughened claws

Tapping twice at the smile pledged into the mask's messy hinges,

And lifts it.

We see a lamb, wearing the scars of a fox-

But shaking every moment

From the effort of being hurt regardless.

~