Let’s rumble, grumble, roar, and spit,

Let’s cough up all our slime and vomit,

Let’s smear in onto others, and then grin and laugh,

Roll around on the floor, shaking, screeching,

Patting each other’s backs, admiring each other.

 

Here comes the master hunter,

The hunter sounds the horn,

And the hounds obediently flock around him,

Gazing eagerly into his eyes, their tails beating, whipping,

Look, a ragged fox in the distance, running for its life!

Quick, go after it!

The hounds’ eyes glimmer red with blood in fierce anticipation,

Run, run, run! Follow the scent!

 

I am not Jesus.

I am not your sacrificial lamb.

Instead, I am the fox hiding in my burrow,

Its heart beating frantically as it shoves its snout into the sand,

Its fur softened by the moist, cool soil,

Breathing in the darkness.

 

If you think my claws are sharp,

If you think my pace is swift,

It is what being hunted has made me.

If you would like to know where my burrow is,

There is a reason why it’s not advertised –

And yes, there are always two exits.

 

It’s nearly a pity that I’m not religious –

Hell should be invented just for you,

Since you create hell for others.

 

“You should just be different”, say the trolls’ companions.

“Why aren’t you a Rottweiler instead?”

I try to inquire whether they’d really prefer a Rottweiler.

C – “Look at Lorna, how she takes it.”

I – “What she said was antisemitic.”

C – “She was only joking.”

It is not OK even as a joke, I think, though I fall silent.

C – “She is funny.”

Yes, why not just laugh everything off, like nothing ever matters?

The Rottweiler is not hounded. The Rottweiler’s teeth are big and sharp – though do they really not find that I have some qualities Rottweilers lack?

 

To the Centrist, there is no such thing as power relations.

No such thing as society?

All parties are equal, all wolves are grey.

How strange, then, that they always side with the strongest?

 

Lene Auestad, July 29th 2023.

 

Image: Theodor Kittelsen (1891 or 1892), Skogstroll (Forest Troll), Public domain.