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The wolf invites me to dinner at his favorite Italian restaurant. Meet me at five, he says. When I arrive, my mother is sitting beside him. I say, But you invited me, not her. And he says, These things happen. My mother is smiling though her head is lopsided, her shoulders are slumped. I stand with my hands in my jacket. I say, Is that really my mother? And the wolf says, I don’t know. Come closer. Which is unnecessary. A wolf can smell an animal from a mile away. My mother has a distinct smell, like bread and out-of-county water. Breadsticks are on the table beside a tiny blue bowl of olive oil and herbs. My mother’s eyes might be glass. Closer, he says, with his forty-two teeth. I have thirty-one teeth. My mother—I am leaning across the table to pry open her mouth—has teeth made of pebbles. Her cheeks are cotton. Come closer, she says, with her tongue which will not flex.

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Lauren Davis is the author of Home Beneath the Church (Fernwood Press) and When I Drowned (Aldrich Press), and the chapbooks Each Wild Thing’s Consent (Poetry Wolf Press), and The Missing Ones (Winter Texts). She holds an MFA from the Bennington College Writing Seminars, and she teaches at The Writers’ Workshoppe. She is a former Editor in Residence at The Puritan’s Town Crier, and she is the winner of the Landing Zone Magazine’s Flash Fiction Contest. Her work has appeared in numerous literary publications and anthologies including Prairie Schooner, Spillway, Poet Lore, Ibbetson Street, Ninth Letter and elsewhere. Davis lives on the Olympic Peninsula in a Victorian seaport community.