The Wolf

One of the worst things about having had a bad childhood (please see well written examples here, here and here) has nothing to do with the bad childhood itself. It’s the way its effects seem to linger. Sometimes my tendency towards chaos can feel like a wolf at my back. In times like this, all the energy I usually spend on being polite and getting along with others goes to keep myself from acting up. It can be exhausting.

I’m coming out of one of these episodes right now, and although I feel emotionally better every day, my body is still exhausted from all the extra work I’ve been doing to keep my head in the game. This evening after work, I came home and wrote this. I rarely share poetry on my blog because I rarely think it’s any good. And this might not be any good either, but it’s such an accurate description of what goes on in my head sometimes that I feel like I have to put it up.

The wolf, my mother who I curled up inside of
The wolf, my savior who fights for me still
This wolf in my heart who tears at my stomach,
Who cries like a widow for what she has lost

The wolf is my sister, is who I belong to
And I am the thief, run off in the night
Wolf, let me have this one piece of surrender
You know I’ll be yours when I’ve run myself out

You tasted my blood because that’s what I fed you
You’ll have all you want at the end of my years
Wolf, I have run through this field of wildflowers
Wolf, I have run through the days of my youth

Why do you chase me?
You know you will have me
Why do you chase me?
I’m already yours

The wolf my creator, my impatient master
My birth is her birth and my death is her cause

To any who love me, the wolf came before you
Know that I ran for as long as I could

I made the wolf and I put her inside me
I cried to her heart and she sheltered me there
She fed me her strength and I her on my anger

The wolf my creator is also my child

I fled from her need and I tore down her shelter
I took what she gave and I left her to die

Wolf, I am sorry I tried to deny you
You were a means to a much better end

Someday I’ll stop, and someday you will find me
And you’ll have the debt that I owed all these years

I have run far in the time since I left you
I have changed faces and colors and skins

One day you’ll have me, but no one will know you

From what I have told them, they will not believe
You are the victim and I am the fraud

What they will think when you finally catch me
Is I am the hero and you are the thief.

2 Replies to “The Wolf

  1. I really like this, especially the repetition and the rhythm. It feels relentless.

    Remember the time you, me, and Tyler made a community on LJ for our writing, and none of us ever ended up posting anything there? I’m pretty sure it even still exists as a monument to our collective creative stasis. /o\

  2. Oh God. I remember. Possibly one of the better decisions of my high school years, to not put anything in that community. I’m so glad the writing I did in high school is rotting away at my grandmothers house like it should be!

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