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- An audio version of this free verse will be coming soon. Follow the blog to be notified.
- This free verse was inspired by the non-fiction book No Beast So Fierce: The Terrifying True Story of the Champawat Tiger, the Deadliest Animal in History.
Shadows and swollen fog descended over the Kumaon hills,
where the mist billowed in the jungle like a shroud.
The earth grew weary while the town watched carefully.
She did not begin as a phantom.
Leaving behind an amber flame,
until a slug shattered her jaw— cracking two teeth
Ending her game
After that day, nothing was the same
Infamy would follow her new name.
It stole the speed of her hunt.
Pain rewrote her nature.
Meanwhile, a courageous wild boar and sambar deer leaped beyond her broken reach
Defeated, she turned to easier targets, humans.
She kept going despite languishing with a hungry desperation
Four hundred and thirty-six times her ferocity silenced voices.
She noticed a woman gathering firewood, and then a young girl fetching water;
For nearly a decade,
The Champawat Tiger
Furiously charged through the forests between Nepal and Champawat,
A ghost with blood-stained paws, bound to an agony only she understood.
No roar signaled her approach
Just a sudden drop of mountain air, and the impending
quiet drag of striped fur through the bushes
It wasn’t cruelty; she was broken.
Her last stance
Was against a hunter
The sun broke through the gorge.
One last shot echoed against the ancient stone, and the terror ended
, leaving only the quiet hills, the sigh of the wind,
and the tragedy of a predator sculpted into a monster by a world that hurt her first.
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