Survival

On the hunt,

you search only for one thing.

It doesn’t matter what your humanity says.

Anything that breathes

is yours for the taking.

As you draw your arrow,

you feel your heart beat in between the breath and the release.

Is it for your success

or for the target that now lays on the teary ground, life spilled,

soul detached,

mind conquered?

You can’t explain it.

You did what you had to do,

and your doing, as far as you understood it,

wasn’t by choice.

You knew what would come if you hadn’t gone the extra mile.

You knew you wouldn’t make it until tomorrow.

The rainfall had been too harsh,

the snowfall too bitter,

the nights too cold,

the days too fatiguing.

Despondent,

you lower yourself into a lie.

You gather yourself,

your target hunched on your back

and continue to walk down the lonely road,

tragically repeating to yourself

that is

is all normal.