Animal survival

I am operating on the animal plane, a female coyote, instinctive.

My life mate has gone, is gone, is sick, will not come home.  She broke the den, she left the nest, she hurts but will not return.  I dream of death at night, and my sleep is shattered.

I move my bed for the safety of the heart.  Sleep outside on the patio until the rains come, and then downstairs on the living room floor, pillowed with blankets, awkward.  Upstairs, the expensive queen sized nest sits, betrayed, scentless.

It is freezing cold but I feel it little.

I have lost the joy of eating and my breasts are small and my pants hang.  I am driven to re-mate and I circle relentlessly, sniffing, looking.  I am driven to find a new den, and I push and push and scout until I finally buy a new home to hole up in.  I wait for the current owners to leave, tail curled around my paws, panting.

My new Winter mate is tall, and smells like my tribe from her mouth to her cunt.  At first she moves recklessly, relentlessly lovely in my broken nest, making coffee and lighting a fire in my fireplace, laughing a deep gravelly laugh.  I am drawn towards wholeness, and towards her.  But in a month, she says to stop taking her t-shirts to sleep in, that she does not want to be claimed by me, and I am broken down, again.  She dons lilac-scented lotion and refuses my kisses, and I am furious, and confused.

My pack worries.  They whine and lick my face, bring me choice tidbits.  A prominent member, sick with grief?  No, no good, this is not good.  They circle on sweet paws, hemming me in, endless, comfort, community.

But thin and lean, it’s good to be this lean – I am light on the hunt for yet another mate and my muscles for moving my belongings stand out against my ribs.  Wintertime coyote trots endlessly through the frozen air.  The new den will be ready soon!

My mother has come, and I can relax.  She is small, curved and restless, a comfortable graying energetic queen dog.  We go out to eat and I eat and eat.  We come home to sleep and I sleep, through the night, into the morning, the den is being guarded, I am safe.  My new nest is finally ready so the alpha queen and I go to the paint store and discuss shades of off-white.  She and the painter laugh at my desire to have white ceiling, white baseboards and white walls, too.  The den must be clean, open, uncompromised.  It must have integrity and wholeness.

The Winter solstice is in two days and it’s cold enough to snap a finger bone.  I starve and trot and circle, I move and paint and make do.  I continue.  I carry on.  I survive with this animal instinct.