Once There Were Wolves

by Charlotte McConaghy

My father used to say the world turned wrong when we started separating ourselves from the wild, when we stopped being one with the rest of nature, and sat apart. He said we might survive this mistake if we found a way to rewild ourselves.

“He’s a monster,” I say. “You’re giving him too much credit. He’s just a man,”

“I’m not minimizing. It’s just that if you paint a picture of him as a monster then you make him mythical, but men who hurt women are just men. They’re all of us. Too fucking many of us and all too human. And the women they hurt aren’t passive victims, or Freud’s masochists who like to be punished either. They’re all women, and all they’re doing, minute by minute, is strategizing how best to survive the man they loved, and that’s not a thing anyone should have to do.”

We stomped through the world and crumpled things where we walked, too human, not creature enough.

there are those who would fight to destroy the wolves, and those whose apathy would see them destroyed.