We knew ourselves, teethed  

& wild. What if that’s all  

the woods are? Bodies too earthen to be  

bodies, fangs sharpened into thistle, then thorn? 

When we ran between the trees,  

what if we were  

weaving in & out 

of ourselves? Our greedy maws. 

Our bloated song. Furred 

and dressed like little porcelain things. 

We knew each other. Fingertips 

to fingertips, a shiver.  

Claw to bone. 

Bone to mud. Mud we crawled through 

on our forearms.  

Night we stole with bitten lips.

Pretty girls are wild girls, furs  

pooling at our ankles. 

What if this is the part where we 

don’t give ourselves away? 

What if we make love 

become something mycelial,  

a network to be woken in steps 

folkloric & inherited, 

inhabited, with little sound, 

touching to life bioluminescence, yes, 

what if our soles stir the forest 

to cold fire? We knew  

the dark & her baby’s breath 

stars, knew the fur we grew into  

by its feel under our tongues, our spines 

by their arch as we ran on all fours 

between trees & ourselves,

a little wildness in the way we shook

the rain from our fur, the way we shook

our fur to our feet, how morning found

us softer than we’d left.