an encounter

Fear is such a funny thing, which looks at you with no humor in its gaze
  and never blinks wide eyes, and is thin and crippled and seething, and has tears glinting off its cheeks, and is
    small and alone

the abandoned cousin of both sadness and anger,
  the one which curls on to the path in front of me like a wounded dog and refuses to leave, the kind you might feel bad for in a detached, depressed kind of way if not for the clawing and breathing and grabbing and the way it stares, frantic—

i don’t know what to do except keep walking, even as its rabid look attempts to pin me down in order to communicate my certain, imminent death, were i to pass its trembling body.

         my hands shake

if i reached, i could maybe touch it.

   its gaze meets mine again. we might stare, unmoving.
 

i breath

its chest falls

i kneel. Fear

watches me.

I smile. (my eyes glisten.)
 

And it blinks

  moves aside. I step forward (its eyes are on the dripping claw marks)

and keep walking. I am free
 

I glance back, just once. its eyes meet mine again, and it laughs.