At birth I stood where three paths split the road,
The signposts pale, the forest breathing night,
Each leaf a whisper heavy with its night,
I took my first true step and shouldered road.
One path bent right where yellow eyes convened,
Soft paws wrote circles round my shrinking will,
Their hunger spoke in laws I must fulfill,
I learned how fear can keep a man convened.
Their teeth were clocks that chewed the hours thin,
They fed on yes, on silence, on delay,
On dreams postponed to some unnamed someday,
Until my shape grew smaller from within.
Another path leaned left, a sharpened way,
I learned the grammar of the bared-out tooth,
My voice grew loud, convinced it was the truth,
The forest stepped aside when I held sway.
I wore their fur as medals on my chest,
Called conquest wisdom, solitude my crown,
But every howl I silenced echoed down,
A louder absence pounding in my chest.
The third path ran ahead with honest light,
No beasts, no traps, no promise to be brave,
Just mirrored air and footsteps that I gave,
Returning back to meet me in the light.
There I became both hunter and the prey,
My thoughts turned teeth, my doubts a patient flame,
Each answer fed upon the next-born name,
Until the meal was me at close of day.
I ate my past, my future, hope and blame,
Digested prayers I never dared to speak,
The more I searched for strength, I felt more weak,
Self-knowledge proved a beautifully cruel flame.
The forest watched without a hint of choice,
As if it knew no road could set me free,
For wolves and man are mirrors quietly,
Repeating hunger in another voice.
To kneel, to rule, to vanish into thought,
Each path declared itself the truest one,
Yet every ending circled where begun,
A different price for what I thought I sought.
The right path taught how easily we bend,
The left how power fattens what it kills,
The straight how truth can sharpen into wills,
That turn upon the seeker in the end.
I saw no angels marking right from wrong,
No final map, no hand to rearrange,
Only the skill of walking through the strange,
And listening for what I’m fleeing from.
Perhaps the trick is not to choose a side,
But know the beast whose breath is in my stride,
To walk alert, with mercy as my guide,
And let no single hunger be my tide.
For wolves grow wild when named as only foe,
And men grow cruel when crowned as only law,
And minds collapse when turned to endless gnaw,
On truths too sharp to leave a scarless glow.
So still I walk where three-way shadows meet,
Not saved, not lost, not claiming final say,
I bargain daily with the light and gray,
And learn which hunger needs the lesser meat.
If fate must feed, let it be fed with care,
Not all my fear, not all another’s breath,
But just enough to keep awake from death,
While choosing, still, to walk and not despair.