For the Seventy-Sixth Night in a Row, My Dead Mother Comes Back as a Coyote

by | Apr 11, 2023 | Fiction, Issue Thirty Two

and howls all night long.

***

In the morning, her tracks trace a half-moon in the snow around my cabin. Her trail begins and ends with that half-moon; she came from nowhere, and she went nowhere. 

And her prints aren’t paws. They’re bare human feet. 

***

She never comes before nightfall. As long as sun on snow blinds me, I’m free of her–I know I’m free of her.

A few dead daylight hours. And then the sun sets, invisible here among the pines. 

***

Full darkness. I hide in my firelit cabin. 

She doesn’t come. 

I wait.

She doesn’t come.

I fall asleep.

***

Deep in the night, I wake to her howls creeping in through the cracks in the cabin walls. I want—I need—to hear anything other than that. I feed the fire until it gorges and growls, I mumble to myself, I shout, I scream, I shriek, I howl. 

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