Lost in the forest one night, we find the body of a wolf, its throat torn open, the wound a cupful of rippling
black milk, where maggots curl star-white in their glistening darkness. The eyes hum with flies, which drone a joy
into the bones, the brain, wander into the labyrinth through the tongue, still hanging out in half-howl.
We keep walking, holding out our hands to feel our way through the dark as if we could touch as it touches,
know it as it knows the stars that float in the vacuum of its voice, that grow brighter and louder
until it unsays them, takes them back. I know first there was light to give the void a shape. I know
what has no beginning cannot end. I can hardly see your face out here but I can hear you breathing.
Your voice opens and says I think the path is this way, floats out, crosses to me
in a little cloud-boat and is gone— Keep talking. How did the story go? How dark it was inside the wolf,
which had begun as a clump of darkness inside another wolf. Then the child climbed out its belly
shining, without a name— with only a red cap by which to call her and the animal guts in her hands.
Sara Eliza Johnson, Märchen, from Bone Map (2014)
