Coyote, Bones, Howl

Coyote
The house slept while I stayed up stretching, trying to fit my body into this world, knowing
something ancient lives inside me and needs to ease into sleep. It worms its way through my
bloodstream. A howl, released with a stretch to hide its strangeness. It is all I can do to stay sane. To hold together these bones that rattle inside me, seeking to form the perfect posture like the skeleton we had in anatomy class. We called him Hal. Upright and stoic, staying in the front
corner of the room to remind us we are not unlike our parents, that we will always run to and
away from death. Hal, pulled to the center on the room once a year for a lesson, covered in dust, dust being primarily the dead skin cells of everyone in the class, shedding our younger selves. I am stretching three times a day now and sometimes late into the night. My bones pop and click in and out of place. I howl along with them when I am supposed to breathe with intention; intention leads me back to the coyote. The one I am always combing the desert for. The one that stopped to stare at me the day I crossed the rocky wash along the foothills. It had borrowed the eyes of my father. The animal didn’t leave until I recognized him. Hiya dad, I said, and he trotted away. Satisfied. It was the only time I recognized someone who wasn’t fully in his form.

Bones
I told my teacher I would haunt the halls of high school. I would visit his classroom and toss over
the desks to scare the kids. Dance a waltz with Hal. He didn’t object. He taught long enough to
ignore the ramblings of teenagers unable to commit to time. That was long ago and I have not
forgotten. I store memories outside my brain. I shove them around my body so they are always
moving, so they do not land in corners. My mother leaves post-it’s around the house reminding
her to shut off the stove. Watch a boiling pot. Unplug an iron. She worries mostly about fire.
Maybe she recalls the one that streaked down the mountain, aiming for our house when I was a
child. I was outside doing cartwheels until I landed on my arm and broke a bone. She said it
wasn’t a good time to go to a doctor. There was a fire to worry about. It was heading for our
house. Neighbors stood on graveled yards filled with cacti and exchanged bad information that
they repeated until it rose into hysteria. But flames never reached our home. The winds turned
and burned down Mr. Bukowski’s house. Inside were priceless paintings. That’s what he told the
insurance lady months later. Mr. Bukowski, we knew, had a bad memory. By the time my
mother remembered me, my arm had set funny. Two bones no longer moving with fluidity. I do
not fault her. She was running away from Hal. I put a post-it note on my refrigerator to
remember to follow through on my hauntings. Where I need to be when my soul doesn’t have
this body to roam mountains or comb the halls of places I have been, where florescent lights
create dreamlike memories that no longer serve me, but somehow made me be the type of person who follows through on her threats.

Howl
There was a night when a pack of coyotes tore through our neighborhood yipping and crying. No one knew what got into them. (I know this because the next morning a text chain went out
remarking on their howls. It was the kind of text chain never meant to solve anything.) They ran
up and down our suburban streets. Through yards and driveways until I saw lights in the neighborhood slowly turn on. I pictured neighbors waking, pulling back their blankets and sheets
with high thread counts, setting their feet to the ground, their toes searching for something soft to slide into before investigating. They would rub their blurry eyes, thick with sleep, shuffle to their front doors. Maybe they just looked out the window—safer that way. Maybe they even caught site of their fur in the dark. Or saw the distant view of city lights turned on at odd hours as the coyotes altered the way we would view the blackened shape of mountains. How the moon rolled between them like a polished stone. One neighbor bravely said they had their .45 ready. Another neighbor said the animals were looking for pets to eat. Make sure to never let them out alone in the dark. Make sure you don’t leave food out. Make sure you remember to close your garage. To lock your doors. To install motion sensor lights to flood the dark areas around your homes. Flood them with light. Shoot them with rock salt. I wake every morning with my tongue slick with the taste, my fur matted with thorns and moonlight, a howl escaping from somewhere deep inside me.