Wolves
I gather my things,
Set my course
For the fringe,
Through the gate past my mother’s house,
At the borders I know, the trail runs rogue,
Past the thorns and the vines and the signs painted south.
Then the world grows wide for me,
When I first catch sight of The Wolf,
A child of the earth, all naked thirst,
Pounding hard to the beat of the pull.
As heart whimpers out, she calls to me now,
A howl of embered edge,
And the song that I saved for the sun and his days,
Leaps from my lips to give chase through the trees.
With day growing smaller,
I follow
And falter,
‘Cross bones buried shallow and stripped,
My hands dig past, as now, at last,
The earth falls away as my scale turns to slip.
But the sun is lost to me,
Now I’ve fallen to the den of the Wolves,
A mouth in the mud, all thunder and blood,
And laughter curled tight as roots.
Naked and bled, she lifts my head,
To sink herself into me,
And the face that I wore, now itched and torn,
Falls free to loose a jackal’s grin.
Awake and ignited,
I ache
For the slightest,
Whisper of blood on my gums,
I feed and I curse as the hunger grows worse,
The scream at the heart of a body grown numb.
So the moon shines new to me,
Now that they’ve crowned me King of the Wolves,
A face drained white in the dead of night,
All lips and ruby cues.
So if you find me, and the tribe that I keep,
Turn deaf your ears and run,
For the song that I saved for the sun and his days,
Now crows for the night instead.
