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He glares at her You aren’t supposed to interrupt That’s the ritual It’s the unspoken law “Of course it one? Don’t you ever drink your coffee and look out yourand eat your fucking cruller and think for just ayou, waiting for you to come out? They could leave someday Any day” But we all know they won’t We can’t say hoe know It’s the sa Coke It’s a fact of the world Ruben is really upset—he’s breaking another rule but none of us say anything We don’t co “I asked one of them once She’d followed me home from the F train—what I mean is she’d been all the way down on the platforot off she trotted up after me and followed me,snow that never ends and I yelled: Why? Why are you here? What are you doing? What do you want? I guess that sounds du in acathartic moment But I wanted to know so badly And she—I noticed it was a she A bitch She bent her head God, they are so tall So tall Like statues She bent her head and she licked my cheek Like I was a baby She did it just exactly like I was her puppy Tender, kind She pressed her forehead against mine and shut her eyes and then she ran off Like it hadn’t even happened”

There’s going to be a o Not DiCaprio, though So breakthrough And the love interest has red hair, I re to do with us It’s not like they’ll film on location: CGI, all the way So our situation, it’ll just bring stupid kids out here wanting to be part of it, part of so, and they’ll be wolf food But shit, you kind of have to make a movie about this, don’t you? I would, if I didn’t live here Nothing’s real until there’s a movie about it

Of course people want to be a part of it They want to touch it, just for a second They coland, from Japan, from anywhere, just to say they saw one Just to reach out their hand and be counted, be a witness, to have been there when the wolves came But of course they weren’t there, and the wolves are ours They belong to us We’re the ones they eat, after all And despite al

l the posturing and feather-display about who’s been closest, deepest, longest, ant to be part of it, too We’re like kids running up to the edge of the old lady’s house on the edge of town, telling each other she’s a witch, daring Ruben or Seth or Geoff to go just a little closer, just a little further, to throw a rock at heror knock on the door Except there really is a witch in there, and we all know it’s not a game

Anyway, the outsiders stopped showing up so much after Yelena It’s less fun, now

But it’s the biggest thing that will ever happen to us It’s a gravitational object you can’t get around or through, you only fall deeper in And the thing is ant to get deeper in Closer, further, knocking on the door That’s e dress this way; that’s e tell our stories while the wolves watch us outside the cafe , our audience and our play all at once

“Anna,” Seth says to hteningtoward him like I always did, like I did in California when I didn’t knohat snow looked like yet, and I thought I loved him because I’d never kissed anyone else “You never say anything It’s your turn It’s been your turn for months”

I aold ropes ring oddess of come-hither, and my shoes have those ballet straps that wind all the way up my calves My hair is down and it is black They like it, when my hair is down They folloith their eyes I’ve never said so to Ruben but they are always there when I get off the train, always panting a little on the dark platfor snowflakes

I say: “I like listening They do, too, you know Sometimes I think that’s all they do: listen Well After Daniel—I knew hiuys that From that su very strange, like soe or anything I didn’t know him that well and I just don’t think like that I don’t think in patterns—if this, then that The point is, I started following one of them A male, and I knew him because his nose was al the way I started following him, all over the place, wherever he went, which wasn’t really very far from my apartment It’s like they have territories Maybe I was his territory Maybe he wasmy old archery stuff with me My sister and I had both taken lessons as kids, but she stuck with it and I didn’t Seth—well, Seth probably remembers There hile there when I went to school with a backpack over one shoulder and a bow over the other Little Arteain It didn’t seem to bother the wolf He’d run down the 7th av like he had an appoint for the light to change, I dropped to one knee, nocked an arrow, and shot him I didn’t mean to do it I didn’t set out to It doesn’t seem to have happened in a linear hen I think about it Ihi kitchen knife and I don’t even re that You know there’s never any traffic down there anyht there on the uess I brought a cooler, too, because I packed all theti an animal But there’s an instinct to it Everyone used to kno to do this I took it all ho it, salting it, ser and don’t look at anyone “I have wolf sausages, wolf cutlets, wolf bacon, wolf roasts, wolf loin, even wolf soup in plastic containers in e I eat it every day It tastes…” I don’t want to talk about how it tastes It tastes perfect It tastes new “They all know er one, skinny, with a black tip on her tail, sawI watched her do it, bowing her head, not looking me in the eye I reached out h and thick We were…exchanging dos before I kno that works And I started wearing red”

I tell them they can come by There’s plenty of meat to share It never seems to run out, in fact They won’t—most of them They don’t look at me the same way after that In a week or so Seth will show up at my door He’ll just appear, in a white coat with fur on the hood, full ofsnowflakes And I’ll pour the soup into steel bowls and we’ll sit together, with our knees touching

This is what Brooklyn is like now It’s e, a hundred in Park Slope, hts Less towards the bay, but you still find people sometimes, in clusters, in pairs You can just walk down the et how to talk Everyone moved away or just disappeared Some we knoere eaten, soo of that kind of thinking—no one is pero They called the wolves qliphoth—empty, impure shells, left over from the creation of the world A wolf sed a little boy named Ezra whole He played the piano

It snows forever The wolves own this town They’re talking about shutting off subway service, and the bridges, too Just closing up shop I guess I understand that I’hts stay on We still get wifi, but I wonder how long that can really last

We go to the cafe every night, shining in our sequins and suits, and it feels like the old days It feels like church We go into Manhattan less and less All those rooftop chickens and beehives and knitters and alleyway gardeners comprise the post-wolf economy We trade, we huddle, nobody locks the doors anys, from his bantaeneral sort of uitars and druirl with silk ribbons who turns and turns, like she can’t stop The wolves come to watch and they wait in a circle for us to finish, and sometimes, sometimes they dance, too

One has a torn ear I’ve started following her when I can I don’t reain, but it’s there, all the sa, thin tail

One Breath, One Stroke