Coda Canepa

Listen to Coda read his story:

“When you were born, you were always changing,” my mom tells me at some point. How old could I have been, six, maybe seven? Old enough to remember, but only just. 

“You were blue with silver waves pulsing along your back. Thick, soft fur bloomed from your skin, turning you blonde, like Lyra.” Our golden retriever. “But then the fur melted together into raised, stippled-brown folds, like the skin of an octopus, and went smooth again.” She touches my hair as she moves past me, into the kitchen.

My dad squints at the soccer game on TV and sighs. “You were a normal fucking baby,” he says. “Can you imagine? If any of that were true, they would have taken you away.”

I turn back to my mom, but her eyes are closed. She’s cradling something invisible in her arms, rocking back and forth between the sink and the refrigerator. Me, no doubt. Her little monster. 

#

I am thirteen. I’ve learned to control it. Shaking, I tell Emily to follow me behind the school gym. Crouched in the tall grass, I show her. Just my forearm. I grow claws and fur. Solid brown, this time, to match her hair. I let her touch. Then I shake my paw back into a human hand. 

“Okay.” She bites her lip. I feel like I’m going to throw up. “So, you’re a werewolf.” A fact, not a question. 

“I don’t think so. I can turn into anything.”

She stares at my hand. “Could you do a bird?”

I let my fingers fuse together. My skin sprouts white, downy feathers that lengthen until they become strong. 

“Wow.” She grins, and there’s a new light in her eyes. “Now do an alligator.”

I feel my cheeks flush.

#

I become many things for many people, but when I’m alone, most often, I’m a bear. I like to be large, to be soft. I like to feel the power in my body without having to use it. 

At night, I go out into the yard and lie in the grass. I turn my fur black and add little pinpricks of light, reflecting the stars above. I look like a bear-shaped pool of water. Of course, I could be an actual pool of water if I wanted to. 

I don’t really know what I am, other than a mirror.

#

I have enabled many fantasies that would otherwise be impossible, but I only need to tell you one. After a surprisingly romantic date, a shy young man asks me if I can become very large. I like him, so I ask how large. 

“Big enough so that I can crawl inside your mouth. I just think it would be really hot.” He can’t meet my eyes, but he’s smiling.

He tastes almost like an oyster. Wind laden with sea spray in a storm. 

“Did you enjoy that?” a therapist asks me, later.

“It was fine,” I say. “It was nice to give him that experience.”

“But you didn’t enjoy it?”

“I enjoy giving people what they want.”

She pauses, frowns. “Have you ever thought about hurting someone? It would be easy, wouldn’t it?”

I thought about swallowing him. Not that I wanted to, but she’s right, it would have been very easy. 

“I guess,” I say, “but I never have.”

After, she writes me an email to say she’s not sure this is going to work. I need to be more honest with myself, she thinks, to get in touch with my deepest desires. 

“Many people actually have success with BetterHelp,” she writes. 

#

Sometimes I make myself just a few atoms thick and billow into the sky. You could look up and not even see me. The light passes through. But I’m still there, looking down. 

Before she fired me, the therapist had asked, “Have you ever been in love?” 

“Yes,” I said, “Of course.”

“Who?”

“An owl.” How could I tell her about you?

#

Look outside. A rabbit is grazing on the lawn. In the dappled light of the woods, a deer and her fawn gaze toward your window. High overhead is a redtail, circling. 

The grass tastes sweet, like tea. The rustling of the leaves is a predator, stalking. The warm air currents are like hands, lifting higher and higher.

Tonight, in the dark, find Ursa Major. It’s okay if you have to Google it. 

Look for a star that shouldn’t be there, like a smile—

here for now, then gone.

Coda Canepa holds an MFA from the University of British Columbia and is currently pursuing a PhD in Marine Science at the University of Auckland. His work has been published in Southern Humanities Review, and he is a Tin House Workshop alum. You can find him on bluesky at seawoof.bsky.social.