Ghost of My Future

Way back
When the wolves wandered from that grey night
Woebegone in that whistling air and the darkness entire covered in white
Well
I imagine that pack lurking along the foggy edges of the forest and every future possibility
Sneaking down from the snowy mountainsides to sniff at the red streams and not yet realized dreams then circling those trembling teenage hands
All fragile and forsaken and forgotten
But holding tightly to her treasure the way only a mother can
Those wolves were hungry and high and steady-hoping to steal the story from an infant boy who would one day grow to be a broken man

I am shouting to go back in time to the balled fist of my childhood and the sound of my mother's screams as she circles the lonely cold attempting to escape the wrath of a wolf I refuse to call my father

My mother
She wrapped me in her warmth and whispered
We will always win
And we escaped the white into a whispered season with the wolves
But seasons change and they removed the chains and no one slowed the pain until the problem beat purple bruises beneath her brows
So I was raised on rage
On thunder after silence and confused wonder after violence
Oh what visions those cold bones conjured
The desire to hunt and conquer the word father
It's a function of failure
A fiction spun into an affliction stirring the waters of my faith

I am shouting this to go back in time to the winter storm set inside his eyes alive
I'm a cautionary tale without a father
Sure to fail
But listen
That problem is frail compared to the turmoil your name has become
Now father is tangled
Every spoken instance mangled with your absence
Still I remember you singing so sweetly
I love you, son
And I've spent thirty fives years wanting to be that one

Eighteen, out from her shelter in strength and silence and armed with anger in the angles of mountains and men to hunt for the wolves they warned I'd one day become
You've got his eyes, they said
But these eyes are mine and I've set out to break the bloodline into lines of blood striking through every time he said
I see myself in you
I wanted to scream
Of course you do
But I'm tired of reminding everyone I'm not you
So if you keep drawing lines around our lives
I'll wrestle those words from your mouth until the wolves come to your rescue
Then I'll wrestle them down, too

I know it's your bite against these bullets and part of me wonders what stories your teeth would tell
And what questions they would answer
But you've been running for thirty years and never thought to look back
And now that I'm firing shots into your failure
Your dripping blood makes you easy to track
So I'll follow the red steps into the forest where I'll discover the ghost of my future self sleeping in the snow
And I'm not even sure what I think is going to happen
But maybe it'll rest my hope of being loved by the heart of a man I'll never know

I know he said to forgive seventy times seven but I've worked the math and that time has passed into questions I'll never ask like
Why didn't your world crash the first moment you held me in your arms?