Slaughter / Feast

a new year's transmutation

One of my favorite essays in Wintering by Katherine May is about wolves. In fact, the canine inspired much of my favorite art, from Xana ’s lyrics, “42 teeth, where’s your backbone, baby?” to Jensen McRae’s, “Now I avoid the woods; now I know the wolves.”

But recently, coyotes have caught my attention.

I know the reasoning. Of course I do.

My habitat destroyed, I adapt. Beg for food, mate with feral dogs or whatever creature will take me, and I devour. The biggest threat to my survival is those around me. I kill more than I can eat because starvation is not logic-based.

We recently moved from the city to a rural town. With a population of 15,000 people, wildlife outnumbers us, the river rushing to cover our tracks.

On our first night in the new house, we heard an unfamiliar yipping. Huddled around our tiny bathroom window, we watched as a coyote crossed the street. They were right in front of our house, tracking something. We listened as the lone coyote made a ruckus, sounding like an entire pack as it hunted.

We have had three snowfalls, and I search for the paw prints of predators each time. Will I ever stop white-knuckling this hypervigilance?

Winter is always a difficult time for me, as I know it is for many. As Sam Slupski said in their recent newsletter, “It feels like every winter is spent recovering from the fall before.”

Oh, how many times I have fallen into piles of autumn leaves, unable to pick myself up before the first snowfall.

Christmas comes, for me, with snapping teeth.

As Katherine May put it, “We want in the archaic sense of the word, as if we are lacking something and need to absorb it in order to be whole again… In winter, those hungers become especially fierce.”

My grief nips at me, and I snarl back at the empty world. In my car, I listen to Funeral by Phoebe Bridgers and scream at my mother’s specter. I howl. The word why ricochets through my head, slicing through every question, every regret.

What I want is impossible. This has been a year of reckoning with my magical thinking. Of realizing this grief may be all I am left holding.

In recognizing my avoidant tendencies, I realized that maybe reading 239 books in a year is my way of going feral, of embracing my inner creature rather than experiencing my emotions.

Have you ever thought about how the word creature is so close to the word create? What about this gnawing hunger that never seems to be satiated?

This month, my work stagnated while my appetite grew. I slaughtered essays and then left the corpses there to rot when I could not finish them. Pacing around, I see all the carnage I have been avoiding, the central theme I have circled for years.

I bought The Artist’s Way and plan to start in January, hoping this will be the push I need to finish a long-form project I’ve been grappling with. While I might not be reading 13 books in a month next year, my work is sinking its teeth into my flank.

It is time I fight for myself.

The coming project(s) feel like a battle against my ego, against my magical thinking, against my avoidant nature. I am fighting the life I want so that I might live the life I have.

I have been recovering from the fall for the last 12 years.

This winter, I want to do more than survive, or even transform. I want to transmute myself.

This hunger is leading somewhere, and that necessitates change. Chang in how I work, and how I survive the work.

In 2025, I read a massive number of books. While it was incredible to inhale books like breath, my focus is currently on annotating several of my favorite books. I may not read as many books this coming year, but I feel like I will savor each moment with the text.

This may also change how I show up here, and on social platforms. The shift has already begun on Instagram, where I am no longer forcing myself to post near-daily. On Substack, that may mean fewer scheduled posts.

Maria Giesbrecht recently spoke about writing through that kind of pressure, how it chases away inspiration.

I want 2026 to be more animalistic, more slaughter/feast.

More write-three-essays-in-a-day before staring-at-my-journal-for-a-month. Artist’s Dates and reconnection rather than forced contemplations. This is the year to submit my work instead of scrolling on social media. To attend live readings and fewer click-throughs. Playlists for every month and more in-depth newsletters - I might even throw in some pictures!

Less schedule means more room for me to be creative - and isn’t that the whole point?

My next poetry collection, decomposition: poems on the ecology of trauma, comes out March 17th (preorders are open now). A slaughter/feast.

There will be plenty of work to sink your teeth into - I promise.

I am just as hungry as you.