Some untruth.

A photograph she keeps of herself

She is painted in Tiger but her hair is lank
and her roar will never be scary. It is posed,
of course; though the happy must have been real
it is hard to remember. She does not know
how long she has left with her mother; how
this house, this garden, is temporary like the tree
she likes to smell in the rain which will soon be chopped down.

And the cat she loves will be flattened, and the bullying
she’s been getting away with will guilt her
out of the friendship this photo sums up in cats.
The Lions and Tigers won’t last. And neither of them
will fill the roles they think, and time will not be kind
or unkind, just constant. Unfurling like the fat buds
of a tulip she keeps on her windowsill now as reminder.