no one gets me bruh.
writing under cut
And when the shepherd carves his home
with worn hands that were taught
to butcher and slaughter instead of carve,
it should come as no surprise
that he is not the finest woodworker.
But he teaches the wild dog to herd,
and brings home a lamb
not to the slaughter, not for his meat,
but for his worn hands to brush
the lamb’s dirty wool into fine fleece.
The lamb and the sheep dog
play like brothers, two animals
living under a human’s roof.
The sheep dog’s teeth never bare,
never at the lamb, no, but instead
for the lamb. When he falls, the dog
growls as the dirt, and when he
bleeds
the dog licks the lamb’s wounds clean.
And when the wolf looks upon this home,
noticing the holes in the woodwork,
should it come as any surprise
that he stands on two legs and dons a bonnet
and knocks at the shepherd’s wooden door?
And when the shepherd falls in love with
his enemy, enthralled by the sliver of his past
he sees in the wolf, his sharp teeth meant for
slaughter that the shepherd had left behind,
it’s only the sheep dog who sees the wolf
under his coat of red wool. Because
even if his own teeth had been filed down long ago,
he still remembers the flash of white.
Yet the shepherd, blinded by his love,
ignores his own sheep dog’s warnings.
Because what does an animal know of true love?
And when the wolf finally does strike,
with the shepherd’s back turned, his
claws gracing the very lips he’d kissed,
when the wolf reaches the lamb’s wool
and grabs him with teeth the lamb had
only seen bared at dirt,
when the wolf leaves the wooden house
half empty with no fleece to sell,
the butcher blames
the wild dog.
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