home is where the explanations are ********************************************
This is where she was killed, we are told.
The story smells of leaves on the ground in their death throes; children calling out to each other and teachers scolding; winter coats unzipped, taken off, and forgotten until the breeze brushes our skin, and we shiver.
A man named Israel Putnam hunted her down. It earned him the nickname Wolf.
We are on a field trip to Pomfret, the last place she was alive. The Wolf Den.
***
There was a picture of me then. Long blonde hair swishing mid-step. Hand encased in my father’s.
“Daddy’s Girl.”
***
The teachers do not tell us whether we are at a monument to predator or prey, but I am too young not to wonder – not to see the world through her eyes.
Paws glancing off the forest floor. Chest heaving as my muscles expand, contract, expand contract. Tongue hanging from my mouth. Eyes wide as the spaces between trees filling with bootsteps and shouts and metal.
***
I am twelve when I tell a friend and six months later, I open the front door to the stink of “we’ll talk about this later.”
I walk on the balls of my feet. The old wood creaks. My parents let me run up the stairs, this time, two sets of eyes trained on the back of my skull.
***
The hunter – the not yet Wolf. Stalking her along a frozen stream. Gathering a guard of men and boys and dogs outside the cave she hides in. Lighting a fire at the mouth, red tongues licking the stars.
She must die. This I know. This I have vowed to friends and family.
We tie a rope around my foot and I crawl in, long minutes wriggling through nothing until, in the dark, our eyes meet. *** He looks back at the road, hands unmoved from ten and two. “You are not a boy,” my dad says and I know I will always remember it, even if he gets to grow up and forget. *** I am pressed against stone, lips curled back, every tired muscle taught. Can I see the barrel? The man behind it? *** “Are you transgender?” He howls over the screech of our train pulling into MGH. “You queer mother fucker.” I watch myself step off the platform, get crushed under the wheels, twitch on the tracks, seep into this city. “You don’t even know what you are.” *** They brought a storm to the cave. I don’t know how but I swear it is lightning lancing through my ribs, crashing in my ears, blinding me. If I make a noise, I do not hear it. No one does. *** I wake up coughing, smoke from my own gunshot choking my lungs. They look at me. Then back into the dark. Make sure the job is done. Let us see her. You promised. *** My boyfriend tells a story of a time he hunted rabbits. He was young. I never knew him then. He throws firecrackers into the borough with his father and the rabbits come running out. They set the dogs and children free in the yard to find them. He does. It is small enough to fit in his young hands, shaking in the grass. It doesn’t see him. He is supposed to call the dogs. To let them chase and catch and rip. He can’t. *** Bare feet launch me from the last creaking stair out the door, into the rain. It is three in the morning during the hottest July Somerville, Massachusetts has ever seen and I am naked, nearly, more alcohol than blood in my veins, tilting my head back to bark with laughter at each crack of lighting like my brother did when we were kids; his shirt off, his pale, skinny silhouette against the sky. I feel her. Watching. Wanting. Just as I remember. I hold her face in my hands as we stand, feet in the gutter, water rushing between our toes. It will hurt, I say and her skin is soft and her eyes are wide. But I will keep you safe. I promise.i have a lot of aspirations for this, none of which i have the skills for right now. but hey. it's only day one
i'll leave some notes for myself here, i suppose!
- media reviews/analysis/aggregate/log, personal writing and art, exercise log?