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.

**