Why do I growl when I'm upset?
Grrr I want to hold you
Grrr I need your touch
Grrr please help me
Maybe I growl because the only part of me that is allowed to feel pain is the Beast.
Maybe the Beast lurks behind my tongue,
wanting to scream, but only able to scare.
I pity this Beast. It does not bite, and it cannot bark.
Its sole connection to the world is a defensive, angry, growl.

I think I am drowning—
but not in her eyes anymore.

The weight pressing me down
isn’t the pull of her stare,
but my own brother’s words,
dragging me under.

My ears ring.
My heart pounds.

I tell myself to breathe,
but my body is no longer mine to command.

The anchor that held me steady is gone,
and in its place, something festers.
A monster seeps through the cracks they left,
spilling into my thoughts,
warping what little of me remains.

I will spend my life yearning,
serving a queen who will never be mine.
I can’t even look at her.

I am a coward—
the same one she first met.
The same monster she first hated.

And like all beasts in their castles,
I will be alone.

Now! is the time
for those loved least
A howl!
assembles the spooks, kooks, and beasts

An autumnal lense looks
at cracks between light
Be brave! Embrace inspired fright
Reach into the shadow
and we just might make friends
with the spectre called Life

We are alive! Let's celebrate this
divergent experience we co-create

All I seem to remember
Are the hollow eyes
Peeking from behind damp walls
Walls dripping with misery and the cold winters day
In a land where no flowers break through the heavy clay
Even though they try their best
The beast always catches them at the stem
Tears the blossoms out in calm rage
The feeling sold by its empty eyes
Like a useless spy
Wandering the streets sick with smoke
And liquor

Under starfull skies
Praying to God for a comet
To yell my wish at:
“Oh,to be more than just a clump of cells and flesh and bones
Patching together my soul
Creating something mine
The only thing I can call so“
Because I know each breach carved with the steady occupation
I could lead your hands into the gaps dug by
My litospheric plates moving
                                                   shifting
                                                                colliding
Far too soon

Now I have forests and mountain ranges
Peeking out of my veins
Spreading the dark ecosystem of my mind
I can feel the frost and the gloom biting trough my skin
The fog covering my every inch

Fangs dangerously close to bones
The only part clean of the parasites
Unlike my tunnel-disrupted skin
The penetrated veins sticking out of it

Slowly decaying away
While my heart fills my leaking body with new blood
Sisyphean effort
The life that goes to waste
But stains the flesh a vibrant red
My half-alive corpse
The only thing radiant on this grey lifeless street

The monster slowly kneels down to my side
Pierces its talon through my bone
Sells me to death
Leaves my core to rot
Defeating its defences like an unknown weapon
Injecting terror into the cold white stuff tangled around my heart
                                                                                     stuck around my veins

It sets me onto fire
Letting its own creation burn
For the sake of its pleasures
As the luscious woods burn to just skeletons and dust
The hollow eyes filling with the shadows of the light
As it snarls
A twisted caricature of a smile

She was an angel, a radiant light too brilliant for my shadowed soul. And I—nothing more than a beast marked by scars, unworthy of her grace. Yet somehow, she found beauty in my flaws and chose to dance in the darkness with me.

It is I who slew the dragon
And I who must be king
The burden of a crown
Is what that night did bring

A knight who was triumphant
And stood on solid ground
Piercing the monster through the heart
Until it made no sound

But in the court of whispers
They laugh behind their hands
For the throne I won with valor,
Is built on shifting sands

It was I who slew the dragon,
And faced the beast alone
The king of fools they call me
But it is I who claimed the throne

Camila dips a toe into the black
A ring of water sears upon her skin
She knows at once she cannot venture back
until she tames the beast that lurks within
She’s grown familiar with its poison kiss,
The fragile light corrupted by its shade,
Yet if one truth exists, she thinks it this:
Camila’s fought too long to be afraid  
She winces as her knuckles sear and scar
But, trem'bling, she does not cease her descent
She casts her burning eyes into the tar
and spies the beast, head hung and elbows bent,
but startles when the beast cries out in song
Its voice had been Camila’s all along