Chapter 13 Other
Other
barely past the walls it all collapses:
humanity. reason. the boundaries that keep chaos
from the door and the wolf from the world.
these fine clothes are a better prison and a worse defence
than anything they might build, knots and laces
snagging and snarling at skin like traps in the forest,
impossible to untie with fingers becoming claws
and hands – don’t take my hands don’t take my hands –
lost and sharpened and made new.
ever the change comes like prophecy, unwelcome,
abrupt – I thought I would have longer – truer
than truth and more hated for it – this is what I get
for believing I could be a knight.
stripped back and twisted open, the lies
are a poor armour, unable to guard against the bite
of the self. some hungers are never satisfied.
some emptiness is never filled –
I thought this had stopped –
and lies are wood-bitter, poison-sharp, nothing
compared to a hunt and hunger.
a few weeks of humanity and wholeness
is that so much to ask for?
hope’s a lie too, a pretty one, if knives
can be pretty. but in the end a wolf is hungry
and hunger must be fed.
soft thoughts, safe hearth, yearning for a voice
like sunlight and hands like dancers
but that’s a trust built on lies and means as much
as a dream – she saw the truth she saw me
only me only the man – in the end the wolf
is as true as the man – this is not who I am.
but what self is there in the trees and the taste
of the wind, what being in the night howls its name?
I refuse to be defined by my dismantling
by these moments of unmaking I refuse—
we are all made of our collapse.
I am more than this I deserve
more
than
this
the wolf is hungry like the man is hungry,
a desperate emptiness, starving for freedom
and this small moment of a future.
but all we are given is this: always again this,
always again this – I thought it had stopped –
and hope’s pretty blade is a cousin to despair,
impossible to outrun and swift as pity.
it drowns you in your own reflection, creeps in
with the blackness at the centre of your eye.
I deserve more than this
may as well run just for the thrill of it
just to taste blood just to feel like you’re moving
like you’ve ever had any power at all