Who is the fictional character you relate to the most?

I move in groups, yet each of us is one,  
I warn with calls before the fight is done.  
I teach with touch, I calm with shared repair,  
I build my world by knowing who is there.  
I’m not your kind, and yet I changed your view—  
Who are these others, so familiar too?

Animals shaping us

We learned our faces in a mirror of fur,
in the warm grammar of a gaze returned,
in the reach toward the hurt one,
the quiet refusal to leave a companion behind.

We were taught by touch,
by the old arithmetic of grooming and grief,
by the pulse of trust passing hand to hand,
like fire carried safely through a dark camp.

We found our voices in the chorus of others,
warning, calling, gathering, soothing;
not just sound, but meaning,
not just breath, but shared intent.

We became ourselves in company,
in the rules of play, in rivalry softened by ritual,
in the thousand small compromises
that let many bodies move as one.

And so the animal world did not make us less,
but more —
more tender, more social, more awake,
more able to carry one another into being.

Not born to me,  
still I guard your small footsteps—  
wolf-heart, mother’s watch.

Who We Are, Nothing More

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