Transformation

They met beneath a blood-moon sky,
two shadows stitched from pine smoke and silence--
him with frost clinging to his lashes,
the other with fire in his gait,
both carrying the loneliness of miles
in their bones.

They did not speak--
wolves do not need words
when longing cracks the ribs
and howling is a kind of prayer.

They ran,
not in chase,
but in orbit--
circling a hunger deeper than the hunt,
colliding in breath and bite
where the air turned gold with want.

Their love was not the gentle kind--
it was collision and flare,
a spark struck from the teeth of stars,
and when it lit,
they did not run from the fire.
They fed it.

Flesh blistered into myth,
fur sloughed into ash,
as they burned--
not in shame,
but in rapture,
not as punishment,
but as promise.

From the ruin of their old bodies
rose wings--
broad, bright, defiant.
Their howls split into flame-song,
echoing through the canyon of sky,
two phoenixes born
not from death,
but from the heat of love
too wild to stay earthbound.

And so they fly still--
twin arcs of fire across the dusk,
no longer just wolves,
but something freer--
burning,
becoming,
together.