Content warning: implied suicide

Wake up and touch your face. Feel for fur, nestled behind ears, beneath your chin. Don’t panic—you knew this was coming. Don’t worry about your sister coming up the stairs, she’s not awake yet, not this early. You can feel the hum of the fluorescent lights tickling the hairs on the back of your neck. They’re innocent hairs for now, soft and downy. You are a bird waiting for the monster to emerge. If you tumble out of your bathroom nest of razors and toothpaste, will your limbs crack open? Will the fur, the fangs, the claws wrestle out of you? Step outside. Practice howling at the sky. How will you do it, when the time comes? Imagine the tilt of your neck, the snarl of your teeth. Lips curl back, blackened gums. Shriveled wolf girl howls are useless. You aim to terrify. Narrow your eyes and look through the trees. Out there, past the creek of lazy sweltering summer fame, past hawks cloaking their young with feathery wings, past the teeny-tiny doll that slipped from your jacket pocket on a family hike, you weren’t allowed to search for her, you couldn’t save her—past everything there is a lake. Don’t swim to the bottom. Don’t hover at the edge of the slick oily water and stare into the endless dark. There is nothing down there for you, nothing for wolf girls with claws and canine teeth. It’s okay to be sad. Soon no one will recognize you and you will not recognize the sadness. Somewhere there is a little bird girl at the bottom of a lake and she is not sad. Little bird girls shrivel away in bedrooms. Little bird girls crawl up the stairs at five a.m. and tell you they want to die. You rip her apart because you don’t know what else to do. Her brittle squawks mean nothing. Accept that the transformation is coming. Accept that your sister is not coming up the stairs. Snarl at the forest because this is your fault. If you run through the trees, eyes narrowed, you will find a teeny-tiny doll in a pile of gray-brown leaves. In the second-floor bathroom you will find yourself in a mirror. White toothpaste stains on the counter. When you howl into the bottom of the sink it will sound like wings.

Ana Carpenter (she/her) is a sophomore studying English at Columbia College. Originally from Chicago, she enjoys long walks and watching TV. You can find her on instagram @ana_carpenterr.