And So She Was

Her rage was like a wolf’s, and so she was.

She was the snapping teeth and ready claws,

and she was the feral eyes that sought out the moon.

She was the wolf with the pack, yes, but she was more often the wolf alone:

her howls outstretched in the merciless dark.

She was rage and fire and the wolf, but she was also the cat.

She was the kitten in the corner with the raised fists and the skin pulled back from the bone.

She was the anxious panic that boils up the chest in a black instant.

She was the cat alone, and she did not speak if there was no one there.

She was a cat and a wolf, fine, but she was afraid.

She was a songbird spiralling out of the summer sky,

teetering on a wing,

the one wing that worked,

the one that kicked.

She was pirouetting on a razor's edge, flirting with doom as she fell.

She was singing when she hit the ground.

She did fall, and she did weep.

She was the hot spray of blood in the ashes of what she’d loved.

The leaves were dry and they kindled her into crimson.

She wailed a constant misery with the dead things and the lost things, there

at the bottom of the bottom.

But they had no room for tears but their own,

and so she drank them in a teacup.

She wept for days, but she crawled for moments.

She rose herself up on claws and teeth and wings and tears.

She grasped at the roots and stood,

and then tore down the canopies.

She brought down the sky on their heads and laughed,

and she stood on a cloud with her broken feet.

But one day they would only be bruised.