Once There Were Wolves

by Charlotte McConaghy

My edges are smudged.

I dream again, but this time not of monsters. Of wolves. Of running with them into the shadow of the mountain.

wolves, as Niels said, have an unrivaled ability to make humans feel.

Death gets under your skin, you carry it with you. People can sense that.”

“No such thing as trust in the wilderness,” I say softly. “It’s only people need that word.”

To think the four of us were out there wandering that patch of forest together, passing each other like ghosts in the moonlight.

I am fury dressed in flesh.

There is violence in me, in my hands, which vibrate with the need to exert some kind of control, some defiance, and if it is revenge for the things that have been taken from me then fine, I will have that too. I am done with falling prey. I will be predator, at last. I will forget the walls and the self-protection and I will become the thing I hunt and feel it all.

No one can meet your trust if you don’t offer it.

Maybe it’s guilt for the violence. Maybe it lives in you in a way you can’t ignore.