a wolf named Naya became the first wolf on Belgian soil on over 100 years, covering up to 70 kilometres a night, which somehow led me to write this poem, in which I am a sheep

but you keep a pet sheep
letting it wander in and around your home
with freedom, watching movies with it,
making it breakfast, giving it good night hugs

it’s okay if someday you and your sheep need to talk
about how you’ll both manage things when you meet a llama,
or the sheep meets a bull,
and how to juggle sheep-in-the-house / llama-staying-overnight / jealous-bull-or-llama
   logistics and personal politics

but when you fence off a section of grass
and tell the sheep that This Is Where It Is To Live Now
because Boundaries Are Needed,
as we learnt, it doesn’t work out so well

this poem is a bit weird, and I don’t really know
why I’m a sheep in it, but it’s incredibly lonely
being put out in a paddock surrounded by invisible wire
when I’m used to good night hugs and being in the house

relationships don’t need boundaries to be set,
they happen organically and things either are or aren’t,
which you might dismiss as Overly Simplistic
but that’s better than Overly Complicated

so you can’t be surprised when the sheep,
freshly shorn, put into a paddock by itself
to face the cold and a she-wolf,
resigns itself to having its throat torn out

First published in Queen Mob's Teahouse (2019)