it is a peaceful man who is lost to me
stories scavenged from the edge of the forest
cannot slake the thirst of loneliness,
but there’s a sanity to be found in them.
at least the half-lost sanity of a memory of a man
scattered and incoherent in a wolf’s body.
RUN
I don’t have to run
I could stay here and let him find me–
poetic, really, for a king to kill his knight,
unmake the one he made,
unname the one he named.
I remember that first hunt
how he watched me
how I pretended I was lost to it
and to the thrill of being a predator
no novelty in that except the human taste of it
I wasn’t lost
I let him watch me
I dared him to do anything but watch me
sometimes others are a better mirror
–I want him to watch me again
but I am not me I cannot even watch myself–
and the wolf’s a bitter armour
he believes I killed me–
so the stories say, in their way, a classic tragedy:
a man wandering, half-mad, stolen by a wolf’s teeth
–perhaps it’s true
I lost my wits and my skin together
it was a wolf who stole me from my wife
