Wolf that I was,
I had no names
for the different shades
of hunger—the green
ache of one versus
the pink pang of another,
the sharper edges
versus the softer.
All I knew was need,
the opening of
possibility, a way
to be full. Belly-down
in the field, I watched
this new hunger with
my predator’s eye—
the way it rippled
like rain showers
around the grass,
the way it sprang
to the sky, dragging
its colors behind it.
Wolf that I was,
I watched it like
prey, but it wasn’t.
It wasn’t a hunger
for tearing or blood,
though it would be
later. In the sky
it breathed clouds
into the shape
of smaller wolves—
slow and whole, or
leggy and quick,
shredding as they ran.
The kind of hunger
that would fit
an entire body
inside of it.
When I nuzzled
the clouds, my snout
came back cold.
I slunk through
the woods, empty
and dreaming.
Every little voice
could have been
a daughter, every
hooded shadow.
In my dreams,
I swallowed clouds
that hardened into
stones. My body was
an infinite well to drop
infinite stones into,
a belly to slit open
and stitch shut.
In those dreams,
the knife does not
even wake me up.