Once There Were Wolves

by Charlotte McConaghy

I want to follow her to wherever she’s gone and I also fear that place more than anything. I fear, too, the day she stops returning from it.

I wonder if she knows her fury will kill her, if maybe she’s fine with that, maybe she would charge toward oblivion rather than return to whatever she fled. A bit and bridle, a saddle. Some horses aren’t meant to be ridden.

“I’ll alert the villagers to lock up their wives and daughters. The big bad wolves are coming.” I meet his eyes. “If I were you I’d be more worried about the wives and daughters going out to run with the wolves.”

There are languages without words and violence is one of them.

not. A man’s anger, his violence, is no one’s responsibility but his own.

“You must know monsters well, wolf girl.” “I’ve never met one in the wild. They don’t live there.”

There is no light, only his skin and what it feels, his touch alongside mine and too much and enough to drown in.

“Wolves get lonely, same as us. Difference is that for wolves being alone makes them vulnerable, while for humans it keeps us safe.”

must bury that body much deeper within myself than I buried it in the ground.

“Topple the patriarchy!”

The children in us long for monsters to take forms we understand.

When their voices drop away completely the knowing in me is even louder; there is far more intimacy in a silence this long.

I think he must be a good man. But nobody is only one thing.

“You don’t hunt wolves. You hunt their prey.”

“Some people need wildness in their life.”

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