You think this is a poem where the wolf.
 
The forest, after all, is a sleeve of glass daggers.
 
You: the girl. Cold throat, wet shoes.
 
Wolf is the ghost of a hurt remembering itself. Is She. You can hear Her between trees.
 
You can see the ghost Her mouth was, weaving wet fur in the shards.
 
If the forest is an altar built in the crack of your Lost One’s femur,
 
then this is the moment when the girl is you kneeling before it.
 
Wolf says, The scarlet bird is the one
with a scar in it.
 
Wolf says, Gather stones.
 
Is the end of the story of the wolf moving slowly across the sentence
you have been speaking since before you were born.
 
You say what a stone says, in the pocket of your dress.
 
And forget you were ever a wing.
 
Wolf says nothing.
 
You think: was never here.

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