Friday, August 11, 2017

Lone Wolf

tw: reactionary but poetic

I think I stopped writing because I’m feeling lonely. Writing is an act of loneliness. When you put what you write out there to the world, the loneliness intensifies and you wait like a lover with your cold hands on the kitchen table. Am I doing what Barthes did, feminize the act of waiting, or loneliness? “Women wait” he says in A Lover’s Discourse. I write this as I wait for something to happen.



A wolf bites into a tree and cries out. Someone barks, a person walking around in circles the way the sun used to rotate before, when they had no idea what it did. When the sun was unknown, it used to run in circles and it used to dive into the sea at night. When the sun was unknown it used to be free. When you know something you fix it in its place. But when you fix the sun in place, you can’t look it in the eyes, it would burn through you, melt you down, you and your knowledge. Can a wolf bite into a tree and cry? Can you hear it?

I barked that day and no one heard me. But the sun made a little dance around my feet and I jumped. I made a leap, I fixed the sun in its place, a leap of knowledge. But then I burned. And the wolf kept crying.

When you put your writing out there for the world to see, the loneliness intensifies and you wait like a lover with your cold hands on the kitchen table.

No one was watching me that night. I spilled a glass of water on the green dry kitchen floor, and waited for the colours to fade. The lights were off and the colours faded on their own. I lit a cigarette and waited.

A wolf bites a tree and cries out.

My barks reached the crying wolf, and we heard each other. We communicated mutual respect and recognition. Now that the sun no longer dances at my feet, it's time for the wolf to bite me. But it broke its teeth into the tree, and left them there as a sign of an intimate moment that will never occur. I walked towards the tree and embraced it, in comfort. Wolf teeth grinding against my thighs, and my arms burn from the heat of the sun.

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