The Truth About Tigers

The mask becomes your face—
a shell you never meant to keep,
carved to coax a voice
out of the natural quiet
that was always yours.

In small, obedient gestures
you built your own confinement,
grasping for the thing that kills,
just to vanish a while longer.

There’s a kind of magic in it—
to disappear in plain sight,
to fold yourself beneath
the weight of expectation—

while the machine cranks out
billion-dollar death campaigns
disguised as joy,
as rebellion,
as belonging.

To adapt to illness,
to bury the self in the haze,
all for the familiar delusion—

Look at us!
Soul-split specters, clinging—
pleading for the dose.

Normal is a fragile,
strangest fiction.

First published in The Awakenings Review, Spring 2026, Volume 13, Number 1.