The Song of the Wild Woman

I pull up my Notes app, typing in the phrase with fervor.

gathering twigs

It sits there for years.

I see it now, in the long list of notes I’ve written since. No additional text fills the screen underneath the words that I dropped into that space in July of 2019. I don’t remember much of July 2019. I don’t remember what caused me to put this phrase down. I don’t remember what I was reading or watching. What I do remember is why I wrote it down.

gathering twigs reminded me of gathering bones.

La Loba leaned over me, whispering in my ear her song. I had no choice but to follow along.

//

“You are a wild woman,” she says as she looks into the camera. I am watching her video in the morning, with my cereal. It’s a past life reading, a thing I have always wanted to do but never found the right person. This woman fell into my algorithm when I still had TikTok, and I knew like you do when you see anything meant for you.

There she is, I thought to myself.

And so I am watching her video and listening to what she gathered. There is something to my history with chronic illness. There is something to herbal relief and Chinese medicine. It is Samhain season when I receive this reading, and within weeks I will find a practitioner who will guide me through acupuncture and herbal remedies and for the first time in years, I won’t be laid up in bed with a respiratory virus that teeters on pneumonia.

But she says I’m a wild woman.
That I am meant to be wild.

I smile when I hear this, my soul leaning toward the particular truth that all bone women know: wildness requires its own form of shapeshifting—selkie, falcon, wolf, fox—they all have their place here.

//

There is this thing that happens to me when I am approaching a topic that dips into the marrow. When I circle the truth, however hot, I tend to feel nothing because I am not allowing myself the full experience. I’m circling it, and in a way, avoiding it. I point to it, admit it’s there, perhaps talk around the impact of it being there, but never lift my hand to its cheek in knowing.

But when I’m walking right through the Meadow of truth, when I am in the middle of it instead of circling around it, my hands grow hot. My chest starts to vibrate. I blink back tears.

Right now, my hands feel as if I could turn my palm to the sky and a flame would erupt from its lines.

//

Here is the truth, however slant, that I am in the midst of: there is an ache where my wild used to rest. There is an ache, and the only thing I know to do is begin to gather bones to figure out where my wild disappeared.

I pick up one bone, the soil around it dusty and forgotten. This bone held the story of my dreams—of publishing books with the sound of booming thunder and the glare of a singular lamp. This bone, if you press it against your cheek so you can hear, whispers the just you wait promise that went marrow deep in those early days. Before the hope dried out. Before the promise fell flat. Before the doubt took over.

I pick up another bone—hidden between rocks and thistle. I almost miss it, because it’s taken the shape of rocks around it, nearly fossilized into something new. This bone, hiding in the protective landscape and changing shape, carries the scent of expectation. Who can be wild when you’re living as everyone else says you should live? Who can be wild when you’re denying the very parts of you that open up to freedom and belonging? I hold the bone close to my chest, cradling it with care.

I pick up another bone, the marrow sucked dry by vultures. I wince, feeling the pain of being siphoned without consent. This bone carries the story of all of the ways my power was stolen and at times, given away. The ways in which I gave up my dreams for certainty. The ways in which I leaned into algorithm instead of nature. The ways in which I carried mask after mask after mask in order to stay safe and hidden. I find it in the middle of a dried out creek, in between two saguros standing guard.

I pick up bone after bone after bone. Each one telling a story of loss. Each one pointing toward death and yet desperate for new life. Each one creating a bigger picture of a life that is mine and fully wild. This bone, carrying the story of my lineage. That bone, with healed lines indicative of fracture, carrying the story of my childhood. This other bone hiding in a rose bush carries the story of a Christian bookstore and stargazing and singing on Oklahoma backroads.

That bone, with shards poking in and around it, carries the story I still cannot name. It lies perpendicular to the bone with the story of dark hallways and lights under doors and whispered laughter and the desperate feeling of wanting to escape.

I gather them, humming as I work, and resist the urge to make them something they are not. I let them rest. Once I gather them all, I lay them down on the desert floor. I turn to the wood, for I have also gathered twigs that serve as fuel for my bonfire. I light it, watching the flames lick the sky, and I begin to sing.

Bones begin to snap together.
Star light drops down, filling the spaces where marrow was sucked dry.
Sparks fill my vision and the scent of life takes over.

The bones begin to dance.
The joy creating skin and muscle and fangs and hair.

I continue to sing, my voice echoing on the walls of this desert canyon, and the sound of a rushing river joins. Coyotes howl in the distance. The crackle of fire the only percussion needed. I sing until I can’t anymore, until my throat is dry and the fire has dwindled to embers. And then I hear it—a breath.

It is a gasp, an urgent intake of life.

And then, laughter.

The woman appears, naked and unafraid, her hair blowing in the wind.

She walks up to me and places her hand on my cheek before cracking open my ribcage and crawling inside.

Are you ready? She asks. And I know what she needs—what I need. I rub my nose with my arm and look at the path in front of me, speckled with the night sky. I let the wildness within me rise, my veins filling with the crackling of electricity. There are clouds in the distance and I know a storm is on its way.

It’s me.
I am the storm.

I get on my hands on knees and howl at the moon, the fur breaking open my skin.

And then I start to run.