“LAST NIGHT TIGERS CAME” by Rachel Davison

If I stopped to think about how dangerous life is around me, I wouldn’t get out of bed at all, ever. Supposing I had a bed. There’s always the risk of my own sheets and pillow cases suffocating me in the dark of night as I slumber. And who’d ever dare to wake up? Breakfast, for starters, would be a complete battlefield. The egg I fry may sizzle in its pan and commence to catapult me with grenades of oily fire, seeking to scar my face and singe my eyes until I am blind and can no longer see out the window. Getting dressed is another story altogether, because I might get lost in my oversized shirt like a child’s head left breathless in a plastic bag, or my belt might whip up and pluck out my eyes (I have a thing for retaining my eyesight, you understand)—and really, what’s the worst omen but the very act of tying a noose around our necks right before we straighten our suits and walk out the door? Then there’s the risk of the road. Weaving through traffic in the highway is like zipping your fingers in and out of a cobra’s mouth and hoping it won’t decide to clamp its jaw shut on your hand. Once you get to work, there’s a bunch of things that could call out of the building onto my head as I’m going through the doors, or the elevator may freeze and plummet fifty-seven floors, or my aforementioned noose might get stuck in a door as I’m jostled like a potato in a bag as the crowd surges in and out of the metro bus. Then there’s always the possibility of randomly being run over by a car or a bike-rider, of stabbing my hand to death with a fork while I hurriedly eat my lunch, or maybe a tiger will escape from the zoo and decide that I make a wonderful prime rib. You never know—it’s a dangerous life.

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