Long night
curtains dark the gloom
creak the steps to her sleeping room
solemn woman walks these woods
transforming limb and bone
in feathery flight she delights
to grace a moon swept pond
her whispers weave a song, to call her lover home
entwined they float the woodwind air
until the night is gone
Shapeshifter lights the darkness dawn
to shed the dreaming night
now slips away her lover
and fades the glorious swan

A sadistic outlook
I hide my fallacies and avarice in a sock drawer,
neatly placed next to my pill bottles
In the closet closest, I store the prospect of future casualties
Shuffled neatly undernearth media propaganda and the war in Uganda
I suffocate the tragedy of unknown victims in my display of malice
Muffled as they’re whimpering
Sociopathic symphony

Blackbird your wings like ashen skies
iridescent as blue morpho butterflies
the impaling of your sharpened eyes
all knowing, you cackle
shapeshifter Yaqui man
desert bird, a grackle

Stirring, you stare me down
shaking mesquite leaves to the ground
the air is thick grey sage
smudged with prayers of peace
a wish to cease
the wars we wage

a vision pure of heart
this message of love unfurls
breathe peace - peace
in this world.

My body and soul are not synonymous.
When I look at my body,
I still refer to it as she,
I stare into the mirror,
And she looks back at me.
You can regret her but please
Don't forget her.
We'll never be those kids again.
I can't wait to be someone else again.
I'm an anomaly, a shapeshifter.

We met on common land
Sharing a favorite band
We started holding hands
And I felt absolutely grand
Following your similar strand
But I began to feel ******
Once I saw you had planned
To burn me with your brand
You had my idiosyncrasies scanned
So you could start acting bland
Once I was on your nightstand

While trying to give me an *******
You put on a fake southern inflection
Thinking it’s in vogue to be Texan
You’re more like Rogue from the X-men
Spreading your shapeshifter infection
Trying to pass your suitor’s inspection
You hide your personality from detection
Like a jaded politician during an election
You give the people what they want
Until they love you
Your similarities you constantly flaunt
Until they’re subdued

Your metamorphosis
Informed my bliss
By eating from my dish
You fulfilled my wish
Of finding who I’m looking for
Not knowing what’s in store
Once I start to see more
Deep down to your core
To find an empty floor
Behind a locked door

Raised as a changeling
With trends ranging
From punk rocker
To athletic boxer
In a life where validation
Is another person’s creation
Needed for ego inflation
That’s given as placation
For your simple sedation

Now you’re a shapeshifter
Looking to ape misters
As you forsake sisters
For date blisters
Creating a friendless drought
So when you’re down and out
You need a man who’s devout
While I look at you with doubt

I come to you with problems
You can’t help me solve them
You just listen to what I say
And then press replay
A form of redundant consolation
So issues I don’t relay
To avoid your echolocation
While my soul is filleted

Your Houdini act
Voodoo genie tact
Garnered a time pact
By tricking a blind bat
Through a mind hack
Which gave me great pain
The size of a Great Dane
For a misery refrain
After you interest feigned
To enjoy my reign
But your interest waned
And you quit the game
Saying I’m to blame

Once I’m replaced
You build a new face
On the one you erased
For another embrace
While losing all grace
Looking for an ace
To take you away from this place
Where you’ll always remain
An abrasive codependent strain
Viewing relationships as games
Or obstacles overcame
You become the bane
Of another’s lane
Causing rain
In their brain

Your focus on mimicry
Is super gimmicky
Pretending I didn’t see
Your lack of personality
When you can only parrot what other people say
You become an amalgamation of those you date
Which isn’t the worst but definitely isn’t great
When we should just organically relate

Just one moment passed in time, a split second ticked by
something's changed...
My brain it tingles, something's sparked inside my mind
Was it the way the teacher taught me? The facts delivered to me?
Something has struck a cord within me, and I'm hooked
All my life before feels pointless, I did everything wrong
My passions have changed to something worth my time, this time

I rush home with a spring in my step, the autumn cold penetrates all but myself
I'll dive on my bed, open the laptop, switch it on
learn all I can, dig deeper for the core and branch out more
videos, images, articles, merchandise
my elation grows as the weeks pass by, I look forward to going home
All on my own, wasting my intellect on the activity alone

I'm sorry if I bore you, I don't mean to ignore you
I'm excited and frankly I've no intention to stop
I will rant and rave and sing the hymns
of my religious obsession, like a rabid televangelist
you'll never get how I feed on my fixations
they make me happier than even my own friends
They are my bread and butter

I'm predictable in my unpredictability
whatever next, when will I take my next life step
it's my favourite band, my favourite film, favourite book, favourite creature
it's a subject most curious, it's my talent, my skill
whatever form it takes it's forever my best friend, my consistent shapeshifter
and the old loves never truly leave me, it's an amicable breakup
forever in my heart it resides, old flames join new flings when things are getting quiet
I don't know how I'd survive without obsession in my life
Most folk's lives seem boring, they have holes where passions lack

It could be days, it could be years
one day that tingling feeling will happen once again
a new fixation forms...

Imagine tugging at a loose thread on a sweater, expecting it to break off, problem solved...
but instead that thread unravels and unravels until the sweater is a sweater no more,
but rather a mess of string in a heap on the floor, a chaotic tangle that
resembles the contents of my brain when someone asks, "how was your weekend?"

My thoughts are replaced with the blare of static on TV and I can't hear myself think, so I say what I imagine a person is supposed to say, a preprogrammed response I construct for situations like these when my brain decides to check out...

Because of course the only time my mind -stops- is when I really need it to go, not when I'm laying in bed at 2 a.m., fixating on that cringey thing I did four years ago.

But anyway, I would tell you about my weekend, except it seems that the wires connecting the language part of my brain to my mouth have been cut. My weekend probably ****** anyway, but I manage to say, "it was good." And even then, those three words struggle to get past my lips, and any words more revealing hit the backs of my teeth like a car colliding into a brick wall.

By now the elmer's glue holding me together is losing its grip, so when you tell me about your weekend, the words wont stick. How your breath is wasted on me, when I can't concentrate on not falling apart and on tales of your tomato garden at the same time.

On the surface I look so cold; my painted on smile is a thin sheet of ice, concealing the puddle that hides underneath, one that the sun can't reach --
People will often say, "if it helps, you don't seem anxious". I want to tell them that anxiety is a tormented ghost that drags its dagger like claws across my skin at night, whose presence I can always feel but never see. A monster that feeds on vulnerability, and knows it will never starve.

But, I don't know what to say, so I stare at my hands. Because making eye contact feels like facing a lion, and facing a lion means facing death. But then there are times that death doesnt sound so bad, because I know that as long as I'm still breathing, anxiety finds a way to make that hard for me too.  

Anxiety is a broken appliance that the store wont take back, the Annabelle doll that returns from the trash, so it made a home of me instead. And in return for the shelter I give, my heart pounds like its full of angry bees when I finally press 'send' on the 8th draft of a text message I've been working on since yesterday and I want to hide, but why bother? when in a game of hide-and-seek, anxiety always wins.

It is my shadow during the day and my blanket at night, one that that drapes suffocatingly around my shoulders while I'm pacing the kitchen in the dim glow of the stovelight, worrying that the next day could be the " someday " that the ones I love finally leave me. On these nights, anxiety comes to my rescue everytime. It slithers up my back where it can softly whisper into my ear : "I promise you, chelsea, I will never leave"

Don't be
A mole.

I hate moles.

They burrow
And
Scavenge
And
Live in the
Dark.

Thats just
What you did
To my heart.

You burrowed
Deep,
Down to the center.

You set up camp.
And I didn't know
You were a mole.
I thought maybe you were
A
Straw,
To ****
Bad things
Out.
So I kept you warm
And waited calmly for the
Bad stuff to
Dissapear.

But I realized
That
You were a
Magnifying glass,
To emphasise
My flaws

And you were
A
Seam-ripper
To
Pull the patches
From where
I had already healed,
To make the scabs
Bleed
Again.

And I thought you were
A
Jigsaw
And you were broken
So I could fix you
And put you
Together.

Like a
Vase,
Easily
B
r
o
k
e
n.

And
Then
You left me.

Like a
Tooth
Full of
Cav it ies.

That
Space
Next
To
My heart

No longer full.
And you
Didn't depend on me,
No longer a tapeworm.

I miss you.
Like
You
Were
Mine.

But you were
Never
Mine.

She only speaks whispers that the wind carries away
She's a shapeshifter in my company
Makes me feel more alone the more that I say
Your foothills, so empowered, rolling astray
The transcendence she leaves in your wake

Her tender lips speak false secrets
Through silt and clay they filter out
From the freckles of your face and the dimples of your vowels
You are my purpose, my therapist
In your presence I am sinless

Watching your walls crumble down
With swollen tear ducts
I am escaped
Your lies are safe with me
But your prison is not

Hello my name is Jo and Im a shapeshifter
Hello Jo
I change when Im around him
He makes me someone who gets drunk
He makes me into a person willing to forsake those most important to me
He makes me into the worst version of myself
He is my father
He uses everything he's got to overpower everyone else
I learned my shapeshifter habits from him
Thats why Im here
To say enough
To put a stop to my shapeshifter ways

Fetch is a cat.
Independent, comfort loving, needy.

Fetch is a raven.
Wise, trickster, loves shiny things.

Fetch is a mouse.
Hungry, afraid, seeking.

Fetch is a dolphin.
Smart, fun loving, caring.

Fetch is a dog.
Loyal, loving, playful.

Fetch is a dragon.
Strong, dangerous, hoarding.

Fetch is me.
Obsessive, focused, relaxed.