The Wolf & I.

How it began: trails of light, hovering over the constant thud-thud-thud of… My heart? His heart? Their combined heart beats? Rapid movement, within and without, and an intense feeling of being watched. “Did you feel that? I could feel the music in my chest!” I heard her voice, but my eyes were focused and felt their own way through the odd dark, and so I couldn’t be asked to pay attention. A sideways glance - that jaw, those eyes, the way the nose sits, the thick neck and skyward reaching presence - a measured and meditated performance, and I was done. I closed my eyes, I buried the wish, and I felt the familiar rush of nerves. A tap on my shoulder. “That guy - the one you were staring at - he’s standing behind you.” An awkward embrace, a fumbling of phones, hands, eyes, names. A question, an answer, an invitation. “Have we met before?” No, I say, can we talk about it? 

Now: I’m leading him through the throngs of people, our fingers lightly touching for reassurance, but is he really there, or is this some kind of delusion? A backward glance, a moment of doubt - but, look! A pair of eyes staring directly into mine, the question still burning there. The invitation still extended. The answer… a little less obvious. Where are we going? What are we looking for? Would I even know it when I saw it? I’m still staring. I respond by letting go of his hand, and push my way confidently - arrogantly - through the mass of bodies. When I turn, he’s no longer there. I fell in love, and misplaced it somewhere in the euphoric kingdom we’d passed through. Momentary love, despite its smallness and proclivity for impulse, filled my eyes with the Future, and I’d never felt more blinded.

Then: It’s some time later, though time has a way of losing itself tonight. I am playing pillow, and I am playing safe. I am pretending to be in my own skin. I feel a tug on my jeans, and the tide seems to be pulling away from the constant thumping of the music. “I hope you found what you were looking for.” I know, without admitting so, that he has. He will always find what he’s looking for, because I have already figured out who he is. He is the Wolf, and I am the moon trying to be swollen enough with stolen light to be seen, and transform. I am hoping I am tonight’s catalyst, filled with heat and promise. I am trying, because I haven’t yet figured out how not to. Finally, “I think I did in you.” A lie, of that I am sure. And yet, I look. I feel. I reach. And, finally, I move. 

The Future, In the Past: “I feel like we’ve known each other for years. You… you just know me.” He shows me his sketchbook, rambling about some pretentious (but endearing) vision he has. The image looks like a skull being impaled by a paint brush; but when I turn away to cough and look at it again, it looks like a man trapped in a tree. He smiles awkwardly, “You’re the only person who has ever seen what I see.” But, he doesn’t tell me what that is. There’s some interesting music coming from somewhere in his room, but I can’t find the source, and I can’t name the sounds. He takes his shirt off. He starts to dance: the movement starts in his shoulders, and moves down his arms. His torso becomes elongated and twists, almost unnaturally. His feet lift him higher, and arch. The air is vibrating, and I’m lost in the movement. Everything is familiar, and strange. The memory takes over, and then instinct. Instinct gives way to urge, and urge to blissful loss. We are staring into each other’s eyes, and he bites his lip while pulling me close. Strange. So strange. The feeling that I’ve been here before. I feel a pull behind my eyes, a small voice tries to be heard. “You’re a hard one to crack.” Wait. What did you say? Ignored. We test each other’s mouths for proficiency, and find that they, too, feel familiar. I feel teeth against my skin, I feel breath against my neck. And then, pain. It starts in my chest, as the familiarity finds a face, and a name, and a reason. Familiar is no longer strange, and I fall into a haze. I feel a body against mine, and that body feels like a shell encasing something else entirely. Someone else entirely. But, this… this is happening. This is now, then; before, and after. I let my body respond, and tether my consciousness firmly to the weight of his flesh. And then, nothing and everything at once.

The Conclusion, In Which Our Hero Finds He Is Not: We fall into sleep, uncomfortably close. Familiarity becomes an unnerving stumble through memories: scents, tastes, feelings, lights, heaviness. The sharpened teeth of the poised jaw. Realization! Unyielding and unwelcome. Is it the nature of a Wolf to share so much with its brethren? Is the pack mentality more like a hive-mind? Is this some sort of strange shared consciousness I called into being? The fairy tale ends with a moral, neatly tied up with a bow or poured into an impossible mold. But, this… this is happening, and it is not a tale, and in the life of an unlikely hero there is no end. And thus, no hero. I lay in the dull light of the morning approaching, and I watch as the shadows bend and distort his face and body. “Are you half awake, or can I say good morning?” The magic that had been present only hours before now felt like a heavy blanket suffocating us, and there were promises and ideas hanging in the air that had no owner. “I know you.” “I know you, too.” And then, the question formed: But who are you, and why are you here?