circus animal

This house is full of poison.

I think this unfailingly at some point every time I come home. Temper Temper. What a beast it is! I used to revel in its shiny scales and feathers, but now it seems more like a tired creature of the circus, too bored to turn more tricks and too proud to retire behind the frayed, faded ropes.

Rearing its head, one inch off the ground and then two inches, circle once over the tent taunting its masters, one foot above them all and then two feet, raucous peal of laughter, a smirk and then

flight.

You know what the best thing about flight is? Pure, unrestrained freedom. The moment you unleash anger. That is what it feels like. Untethered by any sort of rationality or pretenses, it's the most joyous destruction. The sweep upwards. The uncontainable glide. The noiseless dive. All this I know very well, because I'm forced to watch it from the hopelessly mundane perspective of the ground. Every single time, I watch with a slight fascination and overwhelming repulsion.

The culminated crash back to me is always the most thrilling. Twenty feet away now, and then ten feet, the momentum it carries is like that of a freight train's, two feet and then one foot and then two inches and then one. The soundless spectacle finishes with a much too loud note from the crash cymbals. Whatever else Temper has going for it, nothing beats its theatrics.

**

struggles of dorian gray

I haven't written in here for a while, mainly because...I don't know. There isn't much turmoil in my life right now. And my writing preys on diseased emotions best, is that a little twisted? Happiness, contentment, guilt, they all breed a lot of silence, though the last is easiest to spell out.

So let's talk about guilt. Let's talk about all the times you swore you'd never be a certain way. That's for the shallow and the ones who believe in fairy tales. But you know so much better, and you are much much superior, and you'd be above it all, you swore and swore and swore to yourself, wearing that half invisible sandwich board of self-righteousness proudly.

It's like when you watch a movie and the moment before the hero shows up, no one stands up to do the brave thing at all, and you think, I would do that. I would stand up from behind that chair. I would beat that guy in the red cape to it. But then, if you take a little longer to think about it instead of getting caught up in the sweeping entrance of Clark Kent, you begin to doubt you'd ever straighten your spine at all.

This is what most guilt-ridden things boil down to. Bravery, none of it, not enough of it, not the right kind of it. Breathe, Pause, Exhale, Drop the second person mask now.

I am not brave enough to do it, I fear how it would look, how the silent judgments of each and every stranger would gush out from their eyes, how the monstrosity of the shallow masses would tower over me. I'm too afraid to face it all. And here's the truly twisted thing. I know with certainty this cowering will age into a regret, because hey, I don't believe in fairy tales like them, and I know Clark ain't coming. But I stay behind that chair anyway. Regret is a much more familiar enemy than the masses. And so a much more tolerable one.

**