There is a steady drip of blood running down your chin onto the floor, crouched in front of the open fridge like an animal. The single light from inside the big white box illuminates your hunched back, plays over each and every vertebrae that pokes out of the skin. Too thin. Too much. So cold and alone in this kitchen, fistful of raw hamburger meat to keep that snarling beast under wraps. Your lover slumbers in the next room. So afraid of waking them when your skeleton twists into a new shape, this new form replacing the fertile blood that comes each month. Raw meat warmed up by sweaty palms, a sort of DIY choke-chain, holding back the sharp teeth and terrible snarl. Scrabbling claws to go with an empty womb that will remain forever barren. You are okay with this, preferring the purge of smaller animals from a human stomach than losing so much life-blood that your body counters with anemia. Your lover knows about this, sometimes rubs your back through the worst of it, runs gentle fingers through your sweat and dirt clogged hair. It is okay, this new normal, this exchange of one pain for another. An emptiness that will never be filled, and twin scars of puckered pink. Meat to mouth, lips pulling back to allow for sharper, longer teeth. There is a steady drip of blood running down your chin onto the floor, this you will sop up later with sponges and the promise of a warm bed where the person that loves you as a man and as a beast will open their arms and tell you to come back to bed.