Tourette's Syndrome: The Wild Tiger Inside of Me (Poem)

Here's a poem I wrote about living with Tourettes. It's titled "Tourette's Syndrome: The Wild Tiger Inside of Me".  I wrote it last spring and edited it a lot over the summer when I was at my University writing program. Hope you guys like it! Feel free to comment and let me know what you think! This poem will also be published tomorrow on the NJCTS Teens4TS site so you can feel free to comment on it there as well.


Tourette's Syndrome: The Wild Tiger Inside of Me


I feel the underside of your black paws

as you find your way through my dark and bloody veins
and as your strong yet wobbly newborn legs
suddenly feel the urge to jolt forward.

I feel how you teethe at my muscles
like the fresh meat of a gazelle,
and how you nudge your head,
forcefully against the inside of
my shoulders, my arms, my neck
until I move,
until I can’t stop.

I feel that desperation with which you wish
for the wind to play gently across your face
and for the metallic nighttime grasses
to sweep against the stripes of your fur.
I feel it every time your paws scrape and pound
against the sides of my body.

You are mine in a way,
wild one;
there is no latch
to open the cage that is my body,
no way for those black eyes that shine
like a darkened moon to know light.

Oh my wild little tiger,
at times you make standing in one place
like running barefoot through an empty parking lot
that stretches endlessly into the frigid night.

At times you make the cold air that sits in my throat
like the jagged edges of black rocks.
At times you
make me different.

Oh my wild little tiger,
my curse,
my almost
constant companion,
my unwanted teacher,
you are I are one yet
so often I feel that I am your
play toy and that one day you will
rip me to shreds
from the inside out.

More than anything
I want to scream out to you,
make you feel how much
it hurts, how much my muscles ache
after just a day of your relentless torture.

I want to make you know
that I sit on the other side,
swimming backstroke through this whir of noise
which one might call life.
I want to make you know how I want to hit back,
so, so hard.