Introduction: this is one of my old time favourites. It is loosely based on Jorge Luis Borges’ poem that I once read. He compared the wild feline to being trapped in his blindness, while I used is as a metaphor for being restless and depressed at the time.
There is a leopard in me, pacing in its cell back and forth. Its breath is deep and its heartbeat is rapid like the rushing pace of its prey in flight. The prey in this case, is my own sanity, slowly being devoured by its hunter. Its eyes stare out the gates of its own prison, fiery orange in colour and intensity.
Its paws reach out between the incarcerating bars and scratches frantically. It’s angry, it’s frustrated, and it shows its teeth. But it cannot escape. For the leopard cannot remember, when or how it became imprisoned in this being, in this cell.
Like a parasite bourn and infecting in its host, the leopard grew in me. For every day that passes, an additional patch grows on its skin.
Meanwhile, I cannot think, I cannot lay still. Dark thoughts seem to resurface like a bad dream. They hide in the corners of my mind, only to haunt me like a cry in the dark. I close my eyes tight and jerk my head to one side. The images go away, but it’s too late. The damage has been done.
The leopard is my prisoner I choose not to free. This is a battle I cannot fight to win. The battle I hold is against my own destiny, my predetermined fate. A line already drawn in the book of life, a line twisted on purpose to test my strength.
But my strength is now thin, and I choose to sink. Sometimes I feel a light breeze lift above of me. It’s my soul trying to fly away, floating slightly like a kite attached by a delicate string.
I forget to breathe and my heart skips a couple of beats. But then, I blink and regain my own self. An angel reminds me of those little things, unimportant and incomplete, irrational or unreal. But still, these hopeful dreams belong to me. No one can take them away from me. I dream and fall asleep, the leopard sleeps with me.
October 28, 2001 18:16