I harbor a gentle whiskered beast
made of quiet sighs, all knees and elbows
jabbing my ribs while I sleep,
a weight shifting among the sheets
in the long shadows of earliness.

Suddenly, unprovoked, he is startled
as if threatened by an electric presence.
He listens intently to the silence and bristles
as though a ghost in the corner has spoken
in a tongue meant for beings higher than myself.

When the spirits have gone he sighs again,
his paws turn circles and he lays himself down
curled neatly behind my knees,
quietly pondering primal truths
that I was never meant to understand.

Outside he chases skittering leaves
and imagines he is wild
in the great wooded taiga,
flushing fowl from the brush,
scattering them like gasps of color,
with fluttering hearts beating warm in their *******
among pines capped white with snow.

It's that **** awake at midnight
Looking to your left and then right until your eyes adjust, drawn to one corner
there it stands.
Tall, grey skin over bone pulled tight as a drum
Still panting through its corn husk lips as if it is trying to keep blood pumping
Its heart removed.
The monster is back to feed.

You're walking home at night, stomach growling again
Turning a bend you run into a wall of a smell
Decomposition, palpable and thick
the Windigo stands under a street lamp bathed in light
Ashen skin nearly translucent, eyes meeting yours, it stares. Dry lips parting
Its teeth are revealed.
Rows of razors with human flesh still clinging to their yellow tinge
The same teeth that bit you years ago
Now its blood runs through you.

Your feet are bare, thick with mud as you run through the woods
Ice spikes the air and your lungs, your legs carry you, thin skin, grey like the day
You're searching.
Looking, pining for the next human you see because maybe when this one meets your mouth and is greeted by your teeth you will feel full.
You will feel complete
That smell of death and hunger will cease to linger around you
But you never find it.

This is the punishment you are handed.
Bones stinking out sorer than a thumb, barely human but still a cannibal, feasting on the flesh of the innocent
Scouring for that one last bite that will satisfy
The one piece of flesh that will make you breath easy and smooth
Hoping and holding out for the person that will fill your belly, curb your appetite
Wanting, Waiting for the pink to come back to your cheeks and the drear to stop its lingering
It stays.
That musky oder still permeates
Your stomach crys out
Your lips remain dry and cracked, all you can taste is the blood running onto your tongue

You are alone at night
Fear doesn't reach you because you are that thing that makes people cringe at in the dark
Teeth gnashing, eyes rolling, hands grabbing, skin peeling
Trying to clutch for the last shred of humanity
Choke it down.
Swallow
only to throw it back up
You will never be full
A spring gone dry
A wheat field molded
Your own eyes sewn shut by your inability to see
And what does it even matter anymore?
The malevolence already surges through your bloodstream
The disease is already infected into your system

So lift your eyes to the peaking sun
Open those desert lips one last time
Not for medicine, for one last cry
And run back to the tribe.

I looked into your eyes and knew how easy it would be to **** you.
I plotted its path and then decided how I would end myself afterwords.
I felt nothing.

Sometimes I feel everything.
I cry and scream and curse, gasping for air. Blubbering in fits. Grabbing at my chest trying to feel for a heart.
Most days now I am normal.
My brain is functioning and my numbness is almost all but gone.
On those days I cry.

I looked into your eyes and thought it would be easy to **** you.
Surely then I would see the face of god.
He would come down, flesh out my pale limbs and introduce me to the sun I haven't seen in so long.
Take one look at me in that light, see my claws and teeth, maybe glance into my eyes.
See my fear, not for him, but for what I've become.
What I've transformed myself into.
Take note of the hours it took to shape my brain into this lackluster heap.

Maybe that crimson pool collected near you would drown me,
I would be consumed and swept away, only to emerge, my skin dyed by the parting sea.
Reborn like a Phoenix, not from its own death but from that of anothers.

Maybe my thoughts never did get better.
Maybe my skull is still screaming at the thought of housing my brain.
Something inside it doesn't sit right,
scratching at the edges of my recesses it demands attention.
It knocks and growls. Clacking its teeth until in one instant, it is released.

I looked into your bare soul, naked and clean next to mine.
Its polished exterior in contrast to the soot of my own.
How can you bear to be next to me?
Your clean gaze further sullied mine's black.
***** and bent, grime in its crevices.
The kind of grit I have been picking out by hand my entire life.
Now my fingernails are split, cracked past the quick and caked by filth.

What would you think if you read this?
Would you cry?
Would you back away?
You would probably kiss me,
take the knife out of my grasp,
bleach my hands white,
sew my frayed dress back together,
wash the dirt off my bare feet,
drop me down into the caverns of fitful sleep so that I may not glare at my reflection in silver.

It doesn't matter if it's rusted, it doesn't matter if its broken, it doesn't matter if its clean.
All that matters is your reaction to me, not fear, not disgust.
The simplicity of not wiping away a smudge on a mirror.

Up past the clouds
Up beyond the sky
I lift my arms
My hands on high.

My fingers jump
My fingers prance
Up in Heaven
My fingers dance

Lustily, merrily,
They roll down the strings
Strumming and plucking
Each one of them sings

Sings with voices
Angelic and sweet
Trills and chords
My joy is complete.

Like my lightning bolt tattoo
Inked into the top of my right foot
(That I got after some other boy
Said he wasn’t in love with me
After all)
You are becoming faded and fuzzy around the edges.
You are an agonizing reminder of all the greatness
I could have had, if.

If only we didn’t live on two separate continents,
If only we hadn’t fought over the blankets,
If only we hadn’t made up for the blankets, slick minutes turning to hours.
If only that other girl hadn’t spent your comely heart.

If only you hadn’t looked at me the way you did
(like you loved every part of me, even my right foot)
then I wouldn’t be getting a foreign tattoo.

But then again, I like the burn of needle to skin.