That tired beautiful animal in me needed to die,
but not like a sacrificial offering.
There was nothing forced about it.
Death is necessarily aggressive
to leverage you from one dimension to the next,
but the gods made no demands.
Instead, they waited at the crossing
with garlands and rare oils
to anoint her fur.

She limped to the altar,
an affliction from that time she fell in the trap,
and she said to her creature friends
I’m ready now, but I need you to lift me up

and up and up
they did lift her
into the realm of Spirit Animals and Devas
where she could give her life to
every animal that dared to be
irrevocably feral.