dream with tiger

Woke up, she’d left the room. I felt a stab of the old loneliness, I knew she wasn’t going to come back. The tiger had come into the room. Came and lied next to me, nuzzling its head into my hand as if it were a kitten. But it was not a kitten, it was a monster three times as heavy as I was, who could kill me with barely noticing it. It made affectionate cuddling movements with its head and finally fell asleep. I, as quietly as I could, got up and slowly and quietly left the room. Didn’t close the door to avoid waking it up -that door, in any event, wouldn’t have lasted that animal a second. Out in the corridor, rain was seeping through the roof everywhere. There were bits of broken masonry everywhere. I needed the loo but the bathroom was destroyed. I was alone in a wrecked house with a tiger. I felt desperately, desperately lonely.