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At night, I can feel his furry spine blanketing my belly, chin flat on the floor with one eye squared, hard-squinting.

 

I watch it flicker, flirting with sleep but he is the lightest of sleepers for my protection. He only ever leaves when his brothers and lone sister excuse themselves to feed off the dead that I have stacked like so many planks on the far side of the tunnels.

 

He is quick about this, always careful to return before they do, hustling from one of the human food caches I hid down here for a rainy day.

 

They’re all pretty rainy now, I admit,

said as my leg continues to leak a viscous red.

​

I pluck my manufactured meal from his jaws, not minding the drool so much anymore, with a heartfelt thank you. He does his little bow, lowering his eyes and dropping his tongue out of his wide mouth with that dopey pant, and then I remind myself: I am only alive because this wolf allows it.

​

I wonder if he reminds himself too: I am only alive

because this human once allowed it.

​

And then I wonder if he, like I sometimes,

wonders why each of us prolonged

the life of the other, under the circumstances.

​

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