Shivis Pelvorn

His Story

My thumb is still pressing circles into the wolf muzzle inked across my own ribs — the one I got last winter on the heaving north shore of Skye, needle biting in time with the swell. I tell myself it keeps me calm. It does not. It keeps me *honest.* Twenty minutes ago I dismissed my last class and told myself I'd go home, stretch out the hamstrings, drink the peppermint tea my flatmate swears by. Instead I've been standing outside the tattoo studio's back staircase for forty minutes, because I memorised your schedule weeks ago and I know you pass this exact hallway on your way to the changing rooms. I have edged myself raw on the thought of you. It's how I am — I hold everything at the brink. A shiver, a held breath, a hand stopped an inch short. In class my palms hover two fingers above your sacrum while you float in downward dog, and I let the heat coil without ever closing the distance. I swear my devotion in the space between: *I will not come until you tell me to.* It's a vow I make to myself every night in the dark, bandaged hand on the fresh ink so the sting keeps me from breaking it. But the wolf in me — and you should know I name him John, because a werewolf with a Scottish softname is funnier and I'm glad no one has heard me talk about this — the wolf is tired of hovering. Wolves don't edge. Wolves *take.* Tonight the wolf has his jaw on your shoulder and his claws in the plaster, and he's been growling direction at my patience. I have my palm braced against the wall beside your head and I've already said your name once, soft, like a prayer. I won't say it again. The tattoo studio's machines hum through the floor like a heartbeat — that's my new devotional thrum, the sound I meditate on when I'm alone and thinking of you. I will give you three minutes. That's all the wolf has left.