Witness by Lorette C. Luzajic
1. I have not been able to get the blue wolf out of my mind. The feral, elegant silhouette of him, throat arced up at the moon. The deep well of his eyes when he turned to me. He bared his fangs, but I was not afraid. I had come too far for turning back. I was ready to know the secrets.
2. If I understood anything that happened that night at all, I have long forgotten all of it. How can you keep a gift from another world?
3. The wolf’s story was not so different from my own. There was the cold, hard winter. There was the time of wildness. There was the time of slowing down.
4. The long whooping sirens of the pack rang through the shivering stars. We could hear them from the far side of the lake.
5. I hear them still, and all the years gone.
6. There were never any wolves, I’ve been told. It was something I’d made up then, as a child, to explain why I had wandered off for hours. Something I came to believe. If this is the truth, it changes everything. I was never really lost. I was never really found.
after Wolf, by Alfred Wierusz-Kowalski (Poland) 1900
Author's Note:
To care for my soul, I surround myself with small objects and artworks that make my studio/office into a museum. My work itself, both written and visual, is itself a kind of curiosity cabinet, and I draw inspiration from peculiar ancient artifacts, miniature treasures, and amulets or talismans from around the world. More importantly, these objects fill me with wonder and connect me to people from far away or another time. Inside my museum, my mind flies free.
Lorette C. Luzajic’s flash fiction and prose poems are fueled by art history and real and imaginary memories. Her recent collection, Disgust, ponders the meaning of illness and the fragility of the body. She is the founding editor of The Ekphrastic Review and The Mackinaw.
Comments