Bisclavret gasps, and sobs, and the wolf rips the humanity out of him, and as the colours of the forest shift and alter and the smells and tastes of the air burst across his senses, he feels the echo of her fingertips on the skin he no longer wears, and then he loses even the remnants.
21
Other
the air is wintergrief and rust-sharp.
it tastes of fear –am I far enough away?–
and fear smells like guilt and guilt like blood.
she has married a monster, shackled herself
to a wreck to be ruined on the rocks
of her affection –did I get far enough away?
did she see me-not-me become this?
this is a ruin that smoulders like a torch
held to thatch. its smoke, bitter as a warning,
sings of a grief too close to be escaped.
I cannot go home not while she is there
I will not bring the wolf there
I will not frighten her with this –and home
like hope is fragile, contingent on human hands.
I should never have bound her to me
to the wolf to this ugliest of truths
the wolf-skinned are better served by forests,
exiled to a bed of leaves or snow –
some place here will be safe
I can curl up there and sleep away the hours
and hope to wake in my own skin–
sleep is a way of waiting for an ending,
hunting a way of hastening it, and what
is a small death to a wolf’s hunger?
I am not the wolf
I am caught by it
ensnared by it
