only me only the man– in the end the wolf
is as true as the man –this is not who I am.
but what self is there in the trees and the taste
of the wind, what being in the night howls its name?
I refuse to be defined by my dismantling
by these moments of unmaking I refuse—
we are all made of our collapse.
I am more than this I deserve
more
than
this
the wolf is hungry like the man is hungry,
a desperate emptiness, starving for freedom
and this small moment of a future.
but all we are given is this: always again this,
always again this –I thought it had stopped–
and hope’s pretty blade is a cousin to despair,
impossible to outrun and swift as pity.
it drowns you in your own reflection, creeps in
with the blackness at the centre of your eye.
I deserve more than this
may as well run just for the thrill of it
just to taste blood just to feel like you’re moving
like you’ve ever had any power at all
14
Him
He spasms back into his own skin sometime after dawn.
The air is fresh, thin mist dissipating in the pale sunshine. The trees are stark outlines against the foggy white of early morning, and the ground is thick with dead leaves, autumn on the verge of surrendering to winter.
He’s naked, and without clothes the change looms again, ready to drag him under. If he can’t dress himself and convince his body it’s meant to be human, he’ll slip again into the wolf and this time, he fears, he won’t come back.
He always fears that. That one day he won’t come back. But the fear is strongest in these moments when his body has forgotten its proper shape and he has no way of reminding it. He doesn’t even know where he is, though it has the look of the royal forest, so perhaps he didn’t stray too far. He was at the castle, yesterday. Did he make it into the trees before he changed? He can’t remember. He doesn’t know. There were so many people; God, what if he didn’t get away in time?
