1. she screams, she yelps. my heart is a feral wolf inside of me. she is, she is. i've kept her locked and safe, starved for touch. but what if i freed her. would she rip my life to shreds, angrily, saying "this isn't what you want"? but how cruel to let her wither, and what if she's right. 2. two faces ; a beast and a girl, gilded, glinting, dropped through the cracks in the pavement, i am , a wolf and a girl, no, it's literal, take me at face value when i say it. they're both in here, in this body and i'll snarl and giggle and hide my wildness in the strokes of my eyeliner and fuck if i didn't want to peel this skin off my snout— yes you see the girl yes, you see her but the wolf looks back

people think wolves are bad, and evil. and i blush as i say this, and i take another bite of my steak, a keystone species; they keep the equilibrium of the environment they're in, but they do so by killing, because they're wild and fully themselves. so we kill them, and we cull them and we say they deserved it. and the steak bleeds on my tongue, while they're out there yodelling, playing in the snow and kissing each other and sleeping in big fuzzy piles.

a strange portal through my pupils, facing the wide open sky, or stuffing my face in the soft mess of the ocean, the more i zoom in, the more i zoom out. i've nuzzled these fellows, wet noses, wet tongues, ferociously! we, made of one another, you of tiny magnitudes, holding this realm in your palms. me of innocent hands, crushing obliviously. mighty, tiny, godly one, the more we zoom in, the more we zoom out. a copepod, a planet, a starfish larvae, an asteroid, and all the space in between, and all the space in between… we share this grave you and i

her majesty the mountain presents herself jaws agape she will whisper silky soothings, yearnings in the tummy. and we'll think of all the shitty beds we've slept on. i'm in the back of my mother's car, looking out the window, always in awe, and i'm happy to be here, but i think about when i'm home, alone, i think some days it's hard to leave my bed, you'd tell me that's normal, considering, but i think the body is a forest, too, i have little creatures keeping a delicate balance, and i consume and i create, and i bleed and i… and i decorate and… and look, my veins, like roots, and the trails digging themselves near my eyes with the passage of time… maybe a tiny bear crosses my face every night, leaving its mark.

i love people. the things that light the fire in their eyes, and breaking their composure with my fingers. watching them marvel at the world, or delight at small things. listen, i'm scared of spiders, but the other night, i tried to pet a lupin, and i picked one up by accident. and it fell from my hand onto a leaf below, peaceful. and i felt no fear at all. so i'll keep my heart open, for bleeding is a sign that i'm here. and i want to be here.

there's an old lady with a trolley, she's looking at the sky, while i rest my head on someone's shoulder. she smiles at me and i smile back, and she goes on her way… but then she stops. it seemed something had dawned on her suddenly, some fluttering words she couldn't keep down any longer. she turned to us then, and asked if we knew the whole world belonged to her. look at the trees, she said. the birds, the daisies and dandelions. all mine. and as i followed her instructions, i felt for a moment that everything looked different. and she told us people would think dandelions were beautiful if they were more rare, and she went on her way. we watched her go and wondered if we'd just spoken to a god, giggling.