Ruby Mae Monroe was a girl we knew from university
who looked so thin she could snap in half, with wrists like matchsticks
and clavicles like bicycle handlebars. she told us stories at lunch hour,
huddled in the woods around steaming cigarettes. spoke
of wolves and their salty teeth, fur thick as a thousand thieves,
and how once they carried her off to a cave in Scotland and made
her theirs. the rest of us clutched our knees in the wilderness
and pretended not to be scared.
when Ruby Mae Monroe walked the earth shook beneath her feet
and the harvest moon howled, clinging to the sky like a bandage
to an old wound.
she reeled it in on a fishing pole, hooking its craters with her tongue
licking it clean of dust. the moon’s innards she served to us in china
teacups at her Victorian house buried deep in the trees.
through the windows we could see the wolves circling and stamping
their paws on the frozen ground, licking their teeth as if hungry
for a meal.
when Ruby Mae Monroe smiled, her cheekbones caved in like rafters,
and she opened the door to let in the wolves.
and onto us they came, in packs and droves and flocks,
thick as thieves.