No Beast, Don’t Bend

Here I am on all fours again, lumbering in front of guests the way I promised I wouldn’t ever, ever do. Mother, my tail came back. Mother, I’m a hairy thunder creature with red maw to match. I did not intend to entertain or terrify your party. I promise. I am so sorry, mother, for the women sent yelling through glass and the men utterly gutted. But you must understand how the knuckle expands, how the body grows so large even I cannot control it. I, so big, I must carry multiple lives inside me. When I turned beast last time, I was able to return to a human shape, to grow small once again beside forks and fine china. But now my hips sore from upright behavior, and I’ve been combed, clipped, washed to death. I am a body surrendered fully to nature, captured in this house, left sitting on haunches in corners under blankets. Won’t you just, mother, please, drag me outside, tie me up in the yard and learn to fear me? My brutish descent is unfair to the effort with which the engine between your open legs once thrust and spit me into this world. I know. And we try to communicate by filling each other’s mouths with freshly cut grass. But even in this feral form, that is not how I talk. When will we end this suffering in such a suburban way? When will we end this acting as open wounds, oozing forth across the rug like sad bodies from different evolutions? When will we end? We are tired and it is okay to say so. Let us stop this wounded redness and be true. Every mother a walking tragedy, set your jewels on fire and let me go. I crawl through the open window saying goodbye, mother, goodbye and be strong. Some things cannot be removed from the cave. You will never again be able to say, you are beginning to look like other people. The edge of the forest is a scar, a scam, and I must travel deeper into these primal bones, deeper still. Let us find solace in the fact that night cannot grow darker. That there is pleasure to be found in hiding in another’s hair. I, your undone and pawed progeny, the great disappointment. Goodbye, mother, I’m back to bent, back to crawling, heading into bushes, becoming a poison berry, so slick and red. Should you find me one day, should you take a bite – no, baby mother, don’t do it!

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