Day 57: The Man Who Cried Wolf

There is no wolf he cried

when asked about

the dismembered body

of the boy of four

his heart missing

his clawed face

all bloodied.

The villagers said,

the boy must have been 

a thief in his past life,

the witches came for

reckoning and took

his evil heart as offering.

Not long after, they found

a woman pregnant with a child

sprawling naked on the earth

her eyes gouged, the marks

of a beast’s great bites on her chest.

The man declared,

there is no wolf, I say.

It must have been the vultures,

the villagers declared,

this woman of ill-repute, dead like

her bastard child, must accept

her karmic fate.

And months since then,

the man confessed to the villagers

I’ve spent sleepless nights

my soul cries every moment

for the boy, the pregnant woman and her child —

I am the wolf.

But the villagers they said,

why should we believe you

you lying crap?

Leave us alone,

There is no wolf.