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Tiger Lily

A Mystical Train Ride

By Hanna KennedyPublished 2 years ago Updated 2 years ago 23 min read
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Artwork by me, Hanna Kennedy

I am dreaming of the earthquake again, the one where I lost him to that lush, crazed, dancing jungle. I only saw him get swallowed whole by the palm trees while the engorged pothos strangled the banyan and longan trees begging for mercy. The birds of paradise finally took flight with the kingfishers and the barking toucans, bragging about their ability to escape such bitter ways of mother nature.

Groundless, I was not groundless like they were. I became her, the earth: soft and lush and angry and gyrating all in the chaos and evolution of her grand rattling. And she did just that, rattled loose all of the women in me when she took him. It’s true what they say about adrenaline. Ten seconds feels like sixty, sixty feels like five minutes, and the three minutes and thirty-seven seconds that earthquake lasted feels indefinite, like it’s still going. No really, is it still going? Is this happening again?

I’m awoken by the sound of a long, drawn-out horn, and the rattling in my chest feels like the same vibrations at the commencement of that earthquake. My eyes must be deceiving me. I’m lying on what feels like lambs ear, a beautiful sage colored rug with cream embroidery atop marble floors. As I jolt upright from the sound of that horn again, I am greeted by a lackadaisical, lounging... tiger? A…Tiger? I pinch my cheeks, rub my eyes then rub them again.

How did I get here? And why is this tiger staring at me like, like, like this is the most normal day ever? Like, she doesn’t want to… eat me? I look around and am surrounded by glass. It appears that I am in a moving train, with a tiger, surrounded by an interior jungle and there’s an amazing ethereal fragrance wafting about.

Outside, to the west are chartreuse green mountains painted by tropical fruit trees and impenetrable shrubbery. To my east is the bluest ocean I’ve seen, nearly neon with the sun directly above. The ocean is glittered where the sun kisses her, and I have to squint because it’s so bright and reflective, and I’m thirsty. I’m so thirsty.

“Water is that way,” I hear. I turn swiftly to see who’s there. There’s no one, no one but that tigress whose eyes I follow to the far corner, where I spot a golden spigot. It’s running water into a large natural looking pool, large enough for her to lounge in.

My own body has become the earthquake again. I must be losing my mind. I finally, slowly back away from the tiger toward the spigot. This is no ordinary train, obviously. Obviously! Obviously, I am freaking out now, splashing my face with water, waiting to wake up. I don’t feel part of my body anymore. In fact, I feel apart from my body, like I’m floating immaterial.

“Do not be so foolish to think that we cannot co-habitat”. The voice is soft, soothing even. Am I really hearing a tiger speak? I take a deep breath and turn toward her again. She is standing now and has moved closer, looking me in the eyes. It’s piercing, her gaze. Her eyes are a yellowish green like the sun has been kissed by a melting green dragon, like translucent seaweed, like if I’d mixed my turmeric tea with James’ matcha. That was his name, James. But I cannot look away, just like I cannot rationalize the fact that something awakens in me as her eyes penetrate my soul, much like the memory of him does. It’s as if I am looking at my own eyes when I peer into hers.

If a tiger could smirk, this one does, as if she knows exactly what is happening within me. “My name is Moia”, she says without moving her mouth. And now this does it. I have officially. lost. my. mind. I laugh. It’s the only thing I can think to do. No, no. I am not thinking. It’s just my innate response to this absurd moment I keep waiting to end. So I laugh and laugh and laugh and laugh.

“You are not losing your mind, Vita. You are merely finding it. I cannot tell you how you got here, because I do not know. There are mysteries in life that will carry on unanswered. And if you try to solve the unsolvable, you will lose your mind and yield only to a version of hell that consumes one in confusion. What I do know is why you have come here. So let us first establish trust. I do not want to eat you, much less hurt you. In fact, if you surrender your rationale to this soft collision of ours, this can all go quite smoothly, certainly smoother than your last few years of trudging through life. I’ll admit to having tasted human before, but I much prefer other, pure animals.”

I don’t know whether to be relieved, curious, or totally grossed out. So I choose all three. I recently read that true genius is the ability to hold multiple truths at once, to hold the paradox of others, of ourselves, of feelings or something like that. I’m not saying that I’m a genius, but since the loss of James, survival has been just that: deep grief mixed with hope and rage and regret, of feeling so out of control and trying so hard to control my mind. It’s been learning when to surrender to the grief and how to tell it “not right now”.

“I know of James. I know of your loss and that you have nearly given up on yourself. And this is why our worlds have collided in this mysterious, necessary way. Now, as you may or may not know, tigers are nocturnal by nature. We hunt at night, prowling underneath the starlit sky. While I am relieved for your company, I must rest now, as I have tended my garden and am quite tired from the anticipation and readying for your arrival. If you dare, you may rest with me. I also love my rug. It truly feels like lambs ear, does it not?”

I tried to rest, but I was too baffled and wired, my mind going a mile a minute. There was a beautiful bronze, velvet chaise in the corner facing the ocean. So I lay there, watching the ocean coast by. I watched dolphins leap and spinner sharks spin turbulently through the air. Ever since that day I lost James, I’ve pondered life nearly nurotically, playing it over and over again in my mind. Why did I survive and he didn’t? Our story did not feel complete. It still doesn’t. And I’ve gotten stuck there, forgetting how to be in the flow of the river of my life. I carry my past around like if I lose it, I’ll lose everything I’ve known of myself. That jungle swallowed a huge part of me too I suppose.

Even when James was alive though, we did not consume each other every day and night. Okay, well maybe we did nearly every night. But, I’d always taken pride in my independence as a woman, well, and my sex drive. And I still do. We had shared passions of course: cooking, gardening, hiking, making love, writing. We talked about anything and everything. We were driven and loved making money and sharing it in small and big ways with those we loved and our community. He had his music and I had my dance. He played his bass and it moved me. I was his muse as equally as he was mine. We loved to miss each other and honored each other’s space. We fought well. I adored his honesty and infinitely respected that he knew what he needed and asked for it. We had loving, trusted, and supportive friends. We lived a stupidly good life together. But my creativity has lain dormant and the energy it takes for me to muster up the strength to do bodywork has felt incredibly burdensome. I know that massage and bodywork is part of my life path, but why does it feel so damn hard still two and a half years after I lost him?

I’ve watched friends fall in and out of love and fall in love again. I’ve seen them through pregnancies and first and second borns. I’ve witnessed them succeed and gain huge promotions, and I was always happy for them. I’ve never compared myself to them because I don’t know that I’ve truly wanted what they have. In fact, I don’t know what I want anymore. My grief is the rip tide that drug me out to the middle of the ocean where my warm, sad waters fed the hurricane of my rage. The sun will soon set and…

I must have dozed off because I am awoken by the sound of a yawn that could only come from a very large cat. I turn to see her sprawled out, mouth concave and as wide as it is tall, claws spreading, stretching her sinew that kills. The sky is all of James’ favorite tropical fruits mashed and spread across it. It would make one hell of a pie, all those guavas and papayas and mangos.

“You are in the past again, Vita. It’s in your eyes.” I turn and she rolls over onto her back again showing her belly as if lightning couldn’t even strike her from the glare I shoot her way, as if a trusting heart could never be broken, as if petals never fall from their stem. “I know,” I say, finding it frustrating that she’s so right! “Are you here again?” she asks. I nod and she nods gently back. “Good, it is time for me to share a story with you.” So I get comfortable again on that soft, bronze velvet chaise and let her paint a new story in my mind.

“It’s my first memory as a cub, my mother and two brothers walking away that morning. She’d thought I was sleeping, but I saw them fade into the green dawn. I don’t know that she was sad to leave me, but she’d at least left a kill for me to last a few days. Mother tigers leave their runt behind so as not to attract predators. I was the runt and the least likely to survive anyway. I understood, I did, that if they waited for me, our mother would be the one left to defend us. And if something were to happen to her, then all three of us, her cubs, would likely have been killed too. She’d waited longer than most tiger mothers would have to abandon me.

So I lived off that kill for a few days. I did not leave the bush she hid me in. I stayed there resting, eating, trying to forget my brothers, my mother. Eventually, it was not that difficult to do since my only goal became survival. I’d eaten down to the bones, my jaws not yet strong enough to get to the marrow. I was so tired I’d begun to have illusions of my father, who I’d only seen once. You see, tiger fathers protect their cubs from afar and only come to share a meal with their mother perhaps once a month.”

“One morning, after being awake all night, I watched the run rise and fade all at once. I smelled the most beautiful fragrance and thought, “This must be the smell of death” and found an inner peace I’d not known yet. But indeed it was not the smell of death. I awoke in the arms of a man with auburn colored hair and blue green eyes, as if all the greens of the earth and the ocean fought over who would remain in his irises and they’d tied. He nursed me to full health and was kind and playful and rough with me. He toughened me up, refusing to coddle me. I still had to learn to kill in order to survive in the wild. He’d made it known that I could not stay with him forever. “Tigers are not intended for a life as pets,” he’d repeatedly told me.

We could communicate like you and I can, Vita, silently through our thoughts. We spent our days lounging and playing when he wasn’t busy working on projects or with clients or friends, who he always had me hide from. He was very protective of me. He became my father and my mother, guarding me near and far. I’d stayed in the jungle only about a quarter mile from his abode. He said he’d found me on his morning hike when I was about two months old. And just like my mother would have done, he left me to my freedom when I was about three years old.

I’d known it was coming. He’d told me when I was one year old that’s when it would happen, sometime between my second and third year. I tried to live in the moment with him, but I was anticipating our separation since the day he’d told me it would come. It’s the only thing I felt like he’d done “wrong”, telling me when, giving me an approximation of the future. I hated that, anticipating the future, especially that particular one. But I had to figure out a way to do just that while enjoying the time I had with him.

One morning, I could smell the heartbreak on him, and I knew he was leaving that day. I’d sworn off my afternoon nap, begging him to let me come home with him, to lounge by his side while he did whatever he’d planned to do. But he would hear nothing of it. He was angry and snapped at me. That’s how he dealt with his sadness sometimes, masking his pain with something that felt more powerful. The heat that day got the best of me though, as did the anxiety and sadness I’d wanted to escape from.

The sun was dissolving behind the trees, fragmented by swaying leaves, when I awoke. I could feel it in my bones, that something was different. Like the hundreds of times before, I’d made sure that no one was around his home before I approached. I stalked stealthily to the house just in case I’d missed something or someone, but there were no lights on, no sign of him at all.”

This was it, our connection to each other. This is why when I look into her eyes, I see myself, because we’ve known the loss of someone we’d loved so purely, so deeply. And we’d each known the anticipation of it. My heart aches and somehow for the first time, I don’t feel so alone. Moia takes a deep inhale. Sighing, she begins again.

“I waited a few days before I abandoned the only home I’d known. But I eventually made off to mark the territory of a new home I would create on my own. I knew I couldn’t stay there or I’d be miserable with a big part of me always anticipating his return. I’d never even had that kind of hope when my mother left because something in him was much softer, not having to fight for survival.

I walked south just beyond the tree line for a night, not wanting to abandon everything that reminded me of him, including a view of the ocean. On my walk, I barely noticed my surroundings, which is quite dangerous for a young tiger. My mind was in the past, reliving stories with my human father. It’s what loss does to one for a while, and what lives in the mind elicits feelings as if it is actually happening.

We have to choose our narrative even if we didn’t choose what happened. It’s healthy to emote, but to remain stuck in the emotion is to live in the past, carrying around an open wound. If we’re not careful, we may attract flies and infection if not properly cared for in due time. And I don’t mean to rush, but to pay proper respect to our grief while being careful not to obsess over what was.

In the morning, I found a large field with tall grasses to lounge in, and I awoke with the sun directly above me. All I wanted to do was drink and bathe, to wash the thoughts of yesterday away. So I followed the sound of a nearby stream and ran for it. When I reached that river, I plunged reverently into her. And though I’d swam hundreds of times before, this felt like my first. I heard that river with more clarity. I felt her with every pore of my coated skin and tasted her flower essence. I was truly alone, and though I’d felt weak in the mind and heart at times, I was physically strong thanks to him.

On my way back to the open field, I meandered along the treeline for some time slowly until I was hit with the same sweet aroma as when I’d thought I was dying right before my father rescued me. So I followed the scent until I found the most beautiful white flower. Memories of my father came flooding back, but this time I felt the stories course through my veins. I’d always long for him, regardless of how solitary tigers are known to be. I’ve always been a bit… how do humans say it?... “out of character”?”

With that, she gave an implicating wink as if I could truly relate, and I did. I do.

“He spoke to me, that white lily. His name was Sokun, which means ‘good smelling’. I was just as shocked as you were when you first heard me tell you about the water spigot. He taught me that he was a symbol of both hope and death. He told me that he didn’t necessarily belong in the jungle, but he’d somehow managed to thrive right there, just on the outskirts in full sun. Becoming quick friends, I told him the same story I just told you. We talked about everything, laughing, agreeing, disagreeing. I learned to walk away during heated debates, his fragility being no match to my ferocity. But he went away every year around winter time. I learned to cope and looked forward to spring every year. We would celebrate his return with the cicada and newborn baby birds, the snakes, and vibrant frogs. But one year, after a particularly long winter, he just didn’t come back. And I broke. I finally broke.

I rested my head where he’d grown his roots, and I wept and wept. And then I wept some more. I wept for my mother and brothers, my tiger father, and my human father, and I wept for Sokun. I trudged through spring and summer, and when the fall came, I went back to his home and found the most beautiful flower I’d ever seen, the aroma was still his… but he was different. He was orange and with deep purple spots and what is now known as the tiger lily. And thus, the tiger lily was born from my tears, and only when I’d found trust in this grand river of life again, did I find him, different, but renewed.”

She walked over to a planter where the only tiger lily in the train cart bloomed magnificently. Her story was my own. I needed to allow my grief to create, and I needed to let go of what I thought it needed to be. I felt so comforted by her, by this shared loss and grief and despair and yes, hope. We fell asleep like that, near her tiger lily, but when I awoke, I was in a different train cart.

This time I was surrounded by mirrors on all four sides. There were two windows, one on each of the two long sides of the train cart and one giant, circular skylight above. There’s a desk, at which I immediately sat, and a soft floor mat for me to sleep on. I was saddened that Moia was gone. Would I see her again?

The ocean is gone, and through the windows I can see that we’ve gone deeper into the jungle, for on either side is only passing green with rare flashes of colored blooms and fruits. I start to panic a bit, not because I don’t understand, yet again, how I’ve gotten here, but because my expanse is gone. I can only either look at myself, the repetitive jungle outside, or the sky above. So this is what I do, and poetry begins to flood out of me like a swelling river, and I cannot write fast enough.

I’m not unfamiliar with isolation. In fact, I’d isolated myself mostly since James disappeared. We’d never found his body in all the resulting chaos and destruction of the earthquake, something I’ve learned not to think about. Our friends and family and I had a funeral of sorts behind our home. I, like Moia, had to move away to kill the delusional hope that lived inside of me, waiting for my loved one to come home. And he wouldn’t. He would have done it, come home.

But I left in a shit way. After a year had passed, I’d felt like I tried everything I could. I stayed home and painted and wrote and danced alone. I danced in dance classes forcing myself to socialize. Relationships felt forced. And I’d forced myself out with old friends. I loved and appreciated these people. But what I did next, felt like survival for me. I left without telling anyone goodbye. I was afraid I’d chicken out or let them talk me out of it or into it. I didn’t tell them where I was going because I didn’t even know. I just needed this to be my decision.

And there’s another part to my story I like to avoid. It’s the part where I had a feeling something was going to happen that morning of the earthquake. I didn’t know what, but I knew something was off.

It didn’t quite come from my mind but an inner knowing. If bodies could ‘see’ without the eyes, this is the only way I can describe how I knew, as if my whole being could speak at once. And like Moia, I understood the anticipation of the future, and it was my hell until I stopped trying to understand it.

I’d begged him not to go for a trail run that day. I told him about my gut feeling. He usually heeded my intuition. But this day, we’d compromised. He said he’d run along the river trail, hugging just beyond the tree line of our property. He was wearing his favorite black running shorts, his neon trail shoes and shirtless as ever. This never got old. I had very different plans for his post-run “cool down” than life did. And so did he. His eyes darkened like a stormy sky when he’d kissed me goodbye. His broad, strong chest and arms engulfed me. His fingers trailed up and down my spine. I loved his strong, working hands with veins like rivers telling their own story. I almost went with him, on his run, to shake my nerves, but I stayed home to cook and listen to music instead.

That’s the thing about life, only through ignoring my intuition have I truly learned just how vital it is. Since that day, every decision has felt like life or death. Should I go to the grocery store now? Or in 5 minutes? 10 minutes? Should I park here, or there? As if every decision were either going to bring me closer or further from him, closer or further from myself, closer or further to death.

I wanted to look for him immediately after the earthquake, but Jame’s best friend, our neighbor, had ridden his dirtbike over and stopped me. He said he couldn’t risk losing me too in any aftershocks. We needed help anyway, equipment to move downed trees. I hated it, but I understood.

The train begins to slow down, and I’m relieved because the flashing green from the windows has become a bit dizzying. When the train slows, so does my mind. It’s like the two are intertwined. I'm relieved for the reprieve and lie down on my plush floor mat. The sky light becomes a kaleidoscope of large palm leaves and stars and dark sky, and I am taken back to the day I met him.

My life was packed in my car. I was moving from a small city in Louisiana to San Diego. It had everything I wanted: the ocean, mountains, diversity, sun, amazing weather and new people and new opportunities. I had just landed a massage job at a beautiful boutique spa and was excited and totally overwhelmed.

I was walking to meet a potential roommate, passing a cute french cafe when I saw the cutest miniature staffordshire terrier lounging near one of the outdoor tables. I wasn’t even going to stop. But the couple in front of me did, blocking the walkway right in front of me and asked the owner if they could pet his dog. When they realized I couldn’t get around them, they excused themselves, but to my surprise, I laughed and asked if I could pet the dog too. The owner said, “Come on,” sounding a bit strained, as if this happened all the time, as if “no” wasn’t an option, but he wished it were. I bent down to pet the dog looking up to ask the owner how old his dog was, and to my surprise he was incredibly handsome. His eyes darkened and burned me when they met mine. I had to quickly look away out of fear he’d consume me that instant.

The couple thanked him and walked away. “Would you like to have a coffee with me?” he asked, still looking mighty stern. “I have to be on my way for a meeting with a prospective roommate,” I told him, relieved that I had an excuse to keep moving. “I’m James by the way, and this is Charlie,” introducing himself and his pup. “Nice to meet you. I’m Vita,” I said, shaking his large, strong, unwedded hand as he stood to leave. But we both started in the same direction. So all three of us walked together until we got to my destination. James handed me his card, “I’d love to do this again sometime,” and just like that, he turned and walked away with his adorable Charlie.

She wasn’t a match for me, the prospective roommate. And after a fun, but tiring day of exploring the city, I finally dug James’ card from my back pocket and saw that he was a realtor. I wasn’t planning to call him so soon, but I was pretty desperate. We spent the next three weeks together looking at apartments, sharing awkward, tense silences where our unspoken desires were palpable. But we mostly had fun, intellectually stimulating, easy conversation. He asked me to go on a run the morning I was signing for my new, beautiful apartment, and I did. He came with me to sign the lease, and when the landlord left, we christened the kitchen, the bedroom, the bathroom. Let’s be real, it was small. We christened the entire apartment. Just as he’s about to kiss me again, I wake up, his pheromones still flooding my olfactory senses. This isn’t the first dream I’ve awoken from, his smell lingering as crisply as his presence still does, and I’m not complaining. I have an affinity for our sense of smell, for how our olfactory nerve was the first cranial nerve to develop, evolutionarily speaking, for how much emotion can be evoked from a mere wafting of say… a tiger lily.

But I’m in a new train cart with gorgeous wooden floors, a beautiful white couch, and a table set for two with a beautiful tiger lily atop it. And that’s when I hear him. “Vita, hi.” I turn so swiftly, I’m dizzy. I make my way, hesitantly, to him to touch him, to feel if he’s really real. He is. He is tangible. James and I are together. James is not dead. James is here.

To be continued...

Fantasy
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Hanna Kennedy

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