We are told what a tiger is
From the moment we can listen:
Picture books, poetry, songs and stories,
A thousand ways to show this thing
That few of us will ever see.

We grow older, the stories darker:
The tigers will hunt us, beautiful, terrifying
If we dare to step outside borders
Set by those from a time where they were inevitable,
A promise, guaranteed, that someday they would come.

We dream of the day that they find us,
Make a meal of our fragile bodies,
Leave nothing but bones and torn-up cloth,
Vanish into the night to sleep us away.
We tell ourselves the only way to live,
Is to be meat in the stomach of a predator,
The way it is and always will be.

If we had not been told of tigers,
Would they be as real as now?
Or would they remain nothing
But an amber-striped thought
Stalking the edges of our cities in the dark?