The sun's rays flitted out to meet my eyes,
flirting with the fog and the clouds.
I felt a whisper of peace steal
across my fractured mind -
and embraced it shamelessly, rejoicing in the reprieve.

I listened to the others laughing.
I listened to the birds praying.
I listened to the leopards hailing one another,
scattered calls, quickly lost
in the vast green below us.
They too, were alone, hunted,
haunted by dear ones long dead,
now hanging as trophies,
imperious and dusty and forgotten.

I realised that there was room after all,
there was room in the world for a leopard and I.
There was room, yes,
but not enough leopards to claim
the spaces which were rightfully theirs.
What have we done?

I listened to the early morning
I listened to the songs of silence
The lilting notes of stillness,
the frail descants of tranquility.

And I felt my closeted, coveted, selfishly stupidly guarded
hopes and dreams
leap off my curved shoulders
and fly off into the blooming sunrise
like a broken winged bird.