lessons in lycanthropy
lessons in lycanthropy
By Jax Soob-Legaspi
it’s not actually every month. it can be two months, a year, a decade, three weeks. it happens to everyone but we don’t like to talk about it. / milena, come down with me to the river. come down with me to the train tracks where nothing passes but the small white flowers. let me hold your hand while the moon sails and we both cry and howl. i want to see it. i want to tell you about all the things i think about while i’m monstrous and sad. everyone works all the time and we have other things to make conversation about. nobody talks about this. nobody talks about how it’s good sometimes. and now / all life feels like waiting, feels like suffocating, feels like the inside of the coffin. come with me and let me see the teeth and the flesh, red and raw intestines, the heart. and now what do we do with this life? this / pitiful roadkill, ribs broken breath crushed life? i will not wash my hands of it. i will say grace and be thankful. / i am tired of waiting. i am tired of pretending. i only live when i can see you. the night is here now and we have too much energy to look up at the stars, though i’m sure they’re beautiful. i’m sure they’re swaying and trembling, swooning in this the night sky that covers our temporary hideousness, our temporary aliveness. i haven’t seen you / for so long, so long, so long. come, milena, let us live while we can, before you must smooth out your hair, pick the meat from your teeth, go back to your day job, finish the work you have to do. tell me about what you have been doing. tell me about what you want to be. tell me where you want to live in five years. is it with me? we could have an apartment. we could live in the outback if you wanted, away from everyone, in a giant fuckass house with mahogany. and i’ll commute into the city because as much as it kills me, i like the lights when evening comes and i like to dance. i want to be living with you. i want to be alive with you. it feels dead until the night and its breeze, and its moon bringing the realest and the worst and sometimes the fake and the illusory but sometimes also the love. i miss you and it is evening. are you having dinner? are you behind the wheel, crossing the border and the murray? i want to meet the real you, not the you that is distant and dead, and all too human.
