When The House Wins

Sometimes in life you just have to take a gamble.  You have to walk away from everything you know and plunge your face into the cool, bright sting of the unknown.  It takes your breath away at first and squeezes your lungs in such a way that you think they might never know a gentle sigh again.  Then your eyes adjust and tell your brain to relay tepid safety to the rest of your body.  You take on the characteristics of a fawn in the thin brush.  You try to get the lay of the land.  Associate familiarities while taking in the new beauty around you. Gently picking through with an outward appearance of cracked calm, the swirling torrent of fear and over-awareness occasionally escaping in a gentle whistle.  And then it happens....you spot the mountain lion you knew most likely lay in wait.  Unfortunately once you have spotted him it is to late.  You have entered the thin brush, you are exposed and vulnerable.  You bolt trying to avoid what you know is coming.  That icy clutch as your warmth drains from you and is replaced by empty cold.  Your eyes fluttering shut on an experience that ended as was necessary.  That gentle sigh you yearned for at the beginning escapes for the last time but you feel no regret or shame because you know.  Spring will come again.  The House doesn't always win.  The Mountain Lion doesn't always get her meal.  Regardless, a life lived in the same dense forest wouldn't be worth living if you didn't occasionally make a break for the field of flowers.