(Woman who runs with wolves)

I gave what we had a name, just so I’d forget it, but I am always betraying myself with these words: these
lines are nothing but halls for holy ghosts to roam. My days are a splintered disorder of sleeping and
dreaming too much, like I’m trying to find God everywhere. Star child are you listening? Your want is too
wide for you to cross it. My anger is a big white house covered in ivy, I live there alone. I’ve learned that
suffering feels like religion if it’s done right.

I let my dreams fall like a body off a balcony, like snow, and lick them up like a dog. I wear your scars like
a medal of honor, I’m nothing if not the one you chose to dig your teeth into. I want to love you
carnivorous, dangling on the leash of my own longing. I am the phantom bruise that howls its hunger, and
everything is holy when you are never going to die.

I took a photograph of your foaming and bloody teeth and I use it like a bookmark, or a credit card; I’m
always trying to forget that I can’t save you. You can flip the lake we swam in upside down and you’ll find
a reality where everything is true, where all of us are real. You crawled up the muddy banks to hide, but
it’s giving you away, everyone’s onto you. I climbed the fire trail in my dress shoes for you, the least you
can do is wipe my blood off your hands.

I hung my heart out to dry and it waited for the blackberries to ripen and stain the sink red. I’m trying so
hard to kill you but you won’t die, you animal, you neighborhood coyote. I ferment in love like a dark wine,
I drink it up like a rabid dog. I perform for God in the subway cars of New York, who else would be my
audience? Who else has died twice?

Charlie Stetson is an internationally published poet studying Education at USC and English, Film, and Gender Studies at UCLA. She is a butch lesbian from Oakland, California teaching high school English in Los Angeles, and makes poetry for women everywhere to write about what makes them free. You can follow Charlie on Instagram here.