The first wolf I remember was bagging my mother’s groceries.

I was fourteen and we’d just come from the pool.

(That doesn’t mean I was wearing a bathing suit.

That doesn’t mean I was wearing shorts.

People always wonder what I was wearing.

Why

when it comes to girls and wolves

do we let our brains look for reasons

why she deserved to be prey

before we notice his fangs?)

His name was Adam. He was twenty-one—

I learned this later.

At the time he was scanning my mother’s

broccoli and bread

and when her eyes lowered to her purse

his rose to me.

Sometimes I remember the way the blush

felt crossing my cheeks and wonder

if I was to blame after all. After all

I was pleased to be noticed.

An older boy,

a man,

someone with perspective.

Not many people really noticed me at school

(before “it”).

But Adam did.

I thought he saw something my peers

didn’t see. I thought maybe in that moment

under the fluorescent lights

I had transformed into something worthy.

My father came back then from buying

a lottery ticket and if he saw Adam’s eyes

he pretended not to.

My father never liked conflict.

He avoided it like chewed gum

on the sidewalk.

Maybe if he were different

everything else would be too.