When the Wolf Comes Home

by Nat Cassidy

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

Conspiracy theories are basically just fairy tales for adults, aren’t they?

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.

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? How do you protect? Especially when the danger is you?

Knowledge of behavior you can’t alter is the heaviest kind of knowledge, isn’t it? Knowing you’re a shape-shifter? It gets hard to remember what shape is really you in the end.