TH E R OUND
Leaf-shadows shimmer from the windows. The wolves at the pocked walls lean in towards something in the center. I trip over the dark carpet, but it’s not a carpet—it’s water. The wolves meet my eyes as I sink, scent of chlorine/coconut oil/animal urine. And here again, my dad is teaching me what happens when I try to rescue people. The wolves’ ears forward, nostrils stretched and expanded; my father with his hand on the top of my head. “This is what happens if you try to save the drowning,” and I, I, I, I, I am tasting the water as it burns the back of my throat. He is pushing down and I am five, in a navy and yellow striped two-piece. (&) “That a certain woman being in prison on suspicion of witchcraft, pretending to be able to turn herself into a wolf, the magistrate … promised her that she should not be put to death in case she would … thus transform herself, which she readily consented to, accordingly she anointed her head, neck and armpits, immediately upon which she fell into a most profound sleep for three hours, after which she suddenly rose up, declaring that she had been turned into a wolf, and had been at a place some miles distant, and there killed first a sheep and then a cow.” — Nathaniel Crouch, The Kingdom of Darkness, 1688 (&) Ash from a house fire in my hair. Heat rising from the cracks in the earth, gray and no sun. I had a test at the bottom of the garden. The wolves
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