Bison Heart

It was hundreds of years ago, or more. Maybe thousands. Time doesn't mean much here.

I hunted you. Followed. Knew the wind. I educated myself of your heart by watching, by listening to the rhythms and setting them to my bloodstream.

I was a man and I was a cougar. I was the prairie sea carrying the coyote. I was the dimly lit dawn and the soft sound of you realizing your children were safe. 

How am I to say that I am separate from you? That I can breathe in some built room without your essence finding a way in through the cracks? How is it that the design of this world should have itself the observer?

Tired, half broken and thirsty, I followed you still to the great turn, the curl backward where we meet ourselves, where the veil falls away and we are without illusion. There, in that underworld hue, I saw that I was not me, but you.