I Cried Wolf

By JP Legarte

but he did not come running 
toward my embodied fragility. Isn’t it revealing
when even an animal can discern 
the nature of a steadied liar? Back then, 
I’d tell him all these imaginative stories of humanity,
like how we stole pieces of the sun in the way
we ignited flames in our wooden bones. Every word
I uttered once imprinted his soft, grey fur while I observed
the phosphorescence of my eloquent sayings
feed his burgeoning appetite. Now, I sleep 
beneath fractured branches decorating  
this skeleton tree, expecting him and his brethren
to hunt the truth hidden beyond 
the stone caverns of what lies inside my thoughts.

JP Legarte is a Pilipino-American junior at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign working toward a Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing and an English minor. He desires to provide spaces through his poetry where others can process their own emotions, ponderings, and anything else within life itself. His poems have been previously published or are forthcoming in Poetry Undressed, Behind the Vision, Words & Whispers, Ice Lolly Review, and The Global Youth Review among other journals and magazines. You can find him on Instagram at @jpl091 and @unspokenentropy.