When Cryptozoologists gather to speak
among themselves of their field of study,
are there cryptids they dismiss out of hand
as being pure fabrications or folklore?
Or do they accept every story ever told
as clear evidence of existence?

If there is one they all dismiss, I want to become
that one. The one that looks in a chosen one’s window
at night, trying to glimpse them through
their curtains. The one that sits in night-alleys
or ditches, waiting to soak their journey
with uncertainty. The one they will not speak of.

I want to be the one that makes them doubt their faith.
They will be silenced by the others if they dare to mention me
but the memory of my ratted fur shall be a rebuke to that dismissal.
Nightmares about my scaled eyes will haunt their shaming.
My chimeric being shall be their trial by fire —
and if there is not one, if all take all at face value,

let me become one so easily explainable
as a mundane creature imperfectly seen or heard
that I can walk through this world secretly snickering
at their inability to see me right in front of them.
Let me embody for them the need for humility
right before I explode into fabulous unreality before their eyes.