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Category: Writing and Poetry

Humans are Animals

In my dreams I run through the trees,
And my toes curl and turn into paws,
And my tail whips behind me and my ears prick up and my snout twitches. At night I curl up to sleep, and pray my legs change shape and my claws grow and I trace the shape of my canine teeth.

Homo sapiens, closely related to apes. Omnivorous, bipedal, elongated digits, blunt teeth. A highly social species. The first tool was a basket, says Ursula, and I cry thinking about mothers picking berries.

Fundamental needs- my den hums gently with electricity, but I still eat and sleep and hide there. The soft animal of my body curls into your lap and disappears from complexity and thought.

People are scared, I think. Something touched our minds and everything was bright and ever-present, and people didn't know how to deal with it. We have to be special, because why else would we be asked to bear the burden of self awareness?

Sir Pratchett says, the angel meets the ape, though these days I feel much more wolf, much more snarling and biting and whining at your door. You made the corner and you press me into it, my hackles raised and my teeth bared.

When humans stopped being prey and started being people, they needed to find ways to fill their time, so they invented games and then rules and then societies.
And then they forgot who created the games and rules and societies and it became acts of God, or of King.

Wires and screens and blinking lights may dazzle us, but our bodies remember the wild, and our lungs strain for clean air and our hearts strain for that desperate, feral kind of love.


Thanks so much for reading!

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