the strength is not always there, and not always pervasive,

particularly in these times when we wake shaking at dawn, and you see us in the streets, bright-eyed and weak-kneed and silent,

and it does not always come when we beckon, and sometimes it does not come at all, despite the best of our anxious pleas directed toward unexplored corners we cannot bear to peer around,

but still, you wonder—

why do we look so lean, why these days we look nothing but skin and bones and desire—

and often, in the absence of awareness and if only to allow you to sleep restless one more night, you allow the easy answer,

but that is never it, this, this is it:

we are hungry. always.

and never for what convinces you of salvation, never for what gives you quick comfort and every lingering doubt you refuse to recognize

and this:

we fight, always, despite often lacking every resource and direction.

we know we will never conquer worlds, not this one nor the next, we know that until collective knowledge grants us the ability to expand and compress these years, there will always be too much to explore,

and we know we will never conquer ourselves, for every same reason,

but we believe

we believe that the last of our brittle ribs now exposed will hold out,

if just for one more hour and one more love

we believe

in ourselves and in the power of our tiger marks, that we may one day grow our own claws and use them only to caress

and we believe

that every charge and parry and retreat in this eternal fight

will lead us home, well before our time.