The Wolf with My Father's Eyes

Lyrics

The street was a catalog of itself.
House number thirteen, then house number thirteen again.
The lampposts bent like question marks under a sky of pressed silver.
And at the end of it, where the asphalt frayed into nothing, he was waiting.
Not a man. A promise shaped like a wolf.
His fur was the color of a television tuned to a dead channel.
Stillness was his native language.
I walked the infinite corridor of the pavement.
Each step echoed back as a different word from a language I almost knew.
He didn't move. He just held me in the architecture of his gaze.
My father's eyes. I have the blueprint somewhere. I remember them.
Those are my father's eyes.
The thought arrives, a perfect silver key. This is the lock.
I am dreaming.
The wolf knows I know.
It lowers itself to the ground, a gesture of quiet geometry.
It sits, as if it had been expecting me.
We walk. No sound but the soft grit of pavement that isn't pavement anymore.
It's turning into a map of somewhere else.
I perform the test. I push my right index finger into my left palm.
It slips through like a ghost through a wall.
The wolf does the same, nudging its nose through my hand, and for a second we are tangled.
I pull back, but I leave my reflection in its eye.
He has your father's eyes.
The thought is a room you have just entered. This is the room.
You are dreaming.
And the wolf knows you know.
It sits, a folded labyrinth, an invitation.
It was always expecting you.
The asphalt is gone.
Under my feet, soft red earth, the dust of a billion unread books from a library that contains only one book, the book of this road.
I look into his eyes again. The father's eyes.
They are not mirrors. They are doorways.
Each iris is a spiral staircase leading down.
We are walking on the red earth, but we are also walking down the staircase.
The wolf is walking beside me.
The wolf is the gaze I am walking inside of.
The red earth is the floor of a corridor whose walls are my father's gaze.
There is no end to the street.
There is only the walking.