At first we are fierce with happiness; my wolf sister bounds through the door swinging her suitcase, god, let’s have a drink, she cries and I keep filling her glass and later when her clumsy paw knocks the red wine  over the new bench , I don’t say anything, instead I grab the cloth real quick and wipe the wine off with a flourish as if to say, how easy is that, sis, how easy is it to clean up after yourself and in that way she won’t jump down my throat or slink off into the yard with the bottle, or hurl it at the neighbour’s dog who hasn’t stopped barking since she arrived and because I keep my mouth shut a terrible peace ensues and the day of reckoning is further  down the track, though no one ever goes there and after a while there’s other things beside watching my mouth and not complaining about wine stains on new benches or bones strewn in the sink because that wolf sister is long gone and it was only ever a whistle stop tour and hallelujah, I sing, as I walk back in the rain to an empty house, hallelujah as I stumble through the door, drenched, my jaw shuddering with the cold.