She is a wild thing.



And I say “thing”

and not girl or woman

because She is neither;



She is both,

caught somewhere in between

the liberated innocence of childhood

and the maddening corruption of growing up.



And this is precisely what makes Her

wilder than the rest of us.



Some will argue that She is woman and woman only,

leaving little room for,

what are considered by many to be,

girlish trivialities.

But these people have only ever viewed Her

from a respectable distance,

a distance from which She appears to occupy

both the form and the essence of a woman

what with Her full ******* and

the manner in which She writes poetry–

with a sort of opulent brutality.



What you will not see

is the girl

(if that is what you choose to call it)–

the lovely child-beast

that dwells inside of Her,

antlers entwined with garlands

of succulents and autumn leaves,

eyes veiled with an ethereal mist.

A deluge of stardust drips from its lashes,

raining down upon the dry expanse of Her bones,

planting dewdrops in the barrenness–

honeyed globules nourished

by free-spirited ambition

and a nonsensical imagination.



And If it weren’t for you,

child-beast–

if it weren’t for your

incessant howling to the moon

and the sweetly curious expression

you get on your face when you’ve been daydreaming,

then this “woman” would be just that–

a woman and nothing more,

the same way you, lovely beast,

would be a girl and nothing more

if it weren’t for the overpowering

womaness of your host.



Do you recall

how you two first met–

the night She had first made your acquaintance?

How, that next morning, you woke up to find

your Hello Kitty ******* stained red,

a sharp pain stabbing at your belly.

You yelled for your mother

in a panicked shock;

you were convinced you were dying

(and perhaps you were, for this was

the very moment you began to grow up.)

But mama told you that there was nothing

to fret about– all females bleed, after all.



But you have come to realize that

while some bleed by nature,

there are also some who bleed out

of their own free will.



At first, it was Her mere nature that

had caused you to bleed.



And, after that, Her wildness.



But She did not mean to hurt you,

to burden your wrists with the

gravity of Her sorrows.



And so you must understand this,

my beast:

like you, She is a wild thing.

The only difference is that

She is a wild thing with a broken heart.

And there are some days where She

would do anything to quiet

the melancholic fervour of her thoughts.



I can see how this alone has destroyed you,

how you have been leached of your innocence.



I watch as you deteriorate

antlers withering to stubs

eyes weeping

stardust congealing

around your tear ducts

mouth frothing with whiskey

shards of broken bottle

embedded in your palms

your body degraded

blouses with alarmingly low necklines

skirts long enough to cover up

the scars on your thighs

but short enough that they feel

the need to whisper “*****”

when your back is turned

because maybe this

lovely beast

is the only way She knows

how to feel okay.



And maybe you have simply

found yourself caught in the

insatiable crossfire of Her darkness;

because the light you possess

was never enough to save yourself,

and it was certainly never enough to save Her.



No.



The wild in you

was never a match

for the wild in Her.



And it is here

in this state of unadulterated wildness

that everything  you are,

everything that She is–

Woman and

child and

Beast alike–

will eventually

be forced to surrender

to the chaos.



This is the place,

wild thing,

where you will be forced to

eat yourself alive.

I. The Fireflies



There was once

a time when the fireflies

had made a home out of me.



One evening,

long after the sun

had surrendered itself

to the hazed horizon

and the pregnant moon,

they had come to my window,

golden freckles of light

twinkling playfully

in the dimness.



What exactly

prompted their gravitation

towards me,

I will never be entirely certain of,

though I have my theories.



Maybe it was the

warm glass of milk

sitting on my bedside table.

Or maybe

they had simply mistaken

the peppers of stardust

laced atop my eyelashes

for their own kin.



Or perhaps–

and most likely–

it had been

the murmur of poetry

on my lips:



…watch how they dart about the trees

in whimsical harmony,

how they rise up towards the dark sky

in the hopes that, someday,

they too will become one with

the constellations that blink

so brilliantly in the blackness.



Yes,

Perhaps this what had captivated them so–

a homage to the fireflies themselves.

Perhaps this is

why they had drifted towards me,

as if in some fanciful trance,

weightless as paper lanterns.



And how sweet they were

as they twirled about the ringlets

in my hair and

nuzzled their small frames

against my cheek

and fingertips.



How sweet they were–

that is,

until the bees came.



II. The Bees



They made lightning bugs

of my fireflies,

whose soft luminescence was replaced

with a violent stream of sparks,

one resembling something close

to the bursting of a fluorescent bulb



And so came the lightning,

the firefly’s only defence against

the approaching swarm,

their only ammunition

in the impending battle:

fireflies versus

bees,

both in want

of my nectared

marrow.



But the lightning

was no reasonable match

for the bees,

with their

large, gelatinous figures

and the persistence

of their stabbings;

annihilated were the fireflies,

carcasses crumbling to soot,

their innards,

still glowing,

smeared across my collarbone

like war paint.



Victorious and

humming menacingly,

the bees then crawled

into my ears

and my mouth

where they proceeded

to feast on their spoils and plunders:

the honey,

that they so cruelly

stole from me.



And once the honey was gone,

so were the bees,

bellies full,

antennae sticky,

their use for me

fulfilled and therefore

discarded.



III. The Spiders



The final hosts

were drawn to

what the bees had left behind:

the inconsolable emptiness

of my being,



They marked their territory

with cobwebs–

spun carelessly

into my arteries

and windpipe.



Breath dwindling and

heartbeat diminishing

I tried to remember the fireflies–

the light–

as the arachnophobia

threatened to devour me.