TAME

Tame — a playful poem

You are driving at night. A deer stands in the road. The car stops in time.

What follows is not a rescue. You get out and walk toward something terrified of you, and you learn that every direct approach makes it flee. You crouch. You wait. You hold out an apple and stand very still. You back away, then come closer again, slower.

The deer is the part of you that survived something and never came home from it. The part that reads footsteps as threat and stillness as the only safe posture. It cannot be reasoned with or hurried.

Tame is a poem you play at the speed of trust. Its stanzas are distances. Its line breaks are the moments you stop and let the night stay quiet. There is no way to win, only to be patient enough or not. The ending says plainly that you can give everything and still not tame a scared deer, which is less a failure than a truth about healing that nobody wants written down.

Headlights, cold air, an animal breathing. Move gently.