When the Wolf Comes Home

by Nat Cassidy

Fucking grief. Fucking stupid, unpredictable, illogical, unhelpful grief.

Kelsey’s arms tear out of their sockets with a sickening ease and the stomach-lurching, rotisserie chicken sound of snapping tendons.

OH MY

No one will be spared when the wolf comes home.

ominous asf

“I Have No Mouth…”

AND I MUST SCREAM

Afraid! Of whom am I afraid? Not Death—for who is He? The Porter of my Father’s Lodge —Emily Dickinson

I’m sorry. And I could never hate you, you absolute asshole. I miss you so goddamn much, Momma.

Ouchie

How could the boy be so hungry for his father’s affection? After everything? She knows the answer. Love.

Love is a shape-shifting monster, she thinks, dizzy and horrified and exhausted and devastated. A werewolf with a bottomless stomach.

Our parents define so many things, she thinks. Love. Hate. Fear. Provider. Abuser. Abandoner. Monster. Mirror. They metamorphose. They mutate. They change. They are fairy tales with inscrutable illustrations.

I miss my mom, she thinks. With every atom of her being.

Is that possible? To live in this world and not scare yourself to death? To feel turbulence and not imagine the plane going down? To experience hope as a grown-up with the same clarity a child feels terror?

How do you not call forth the things that will devour you and give them teeth?

I see my mom everywhere—in my tastes, in my daily habits. Hell, I even see her in the mirror. Under all this scruff, I’m her spitting image.