Miss Peach Gets Lucky

structureandstyle:

So I had a date with this werewolf. I said I’d give him
a Tuesday dinner slot if he got all his tangles out. After all that

conditioner, he did feel greasy,
but no worse than your average guy
by late Sunday afternoon. And we’re supposed to feel sorry

for the frothing one. He’s a bleeding wild flower,
a sock that would scratch you raw and doesn’t even have a match.
He’s got basic desires that lack a corresponding orifice.

And we’re a kind people.
We thank our monsters for letting us invent them. They let us feel dignified

and unsutured by comparison. They’re the parts of ourselves
we pity only when they’re covered in fur, the parts
that never married, never caught a whiff
of their own species, never got out of the house without

severing some plump limb.
So I could’ve stayed home, but what is the heart
without a few sharp knives around?

I did take precautions. My dress looked as unlike a steak
or any sort of first-degree murder as possible, which meant, of course,
I was swirled like a cupcake.

I climbed into his mouth
not long after we set down to eat. The tables of people
looked like loose animals
through the bars of his teeth.

I didn’t say anything, I wanted to spare his feelings,
but I was disappointed when it didn’t hurt.

So now I work for him. My job is to have flesh,
and I’m fairly good at it. He’s president

of not ripping my head off. What worthwhile lover
couldn’t, though? Love is a fancy name
for giving someone without fangs the power to kill you.

In our bed I lie next to him and his spasmodic changes.
Our bed is a darkness in which we feel
instead of see the stars.

When I hear the fsssssst of his tiny hairs parting
and the wet rip of his claws starting to grow, I think, Hey,
which is sharper, teeth or lies,

teeth or lies, baby? The scary monster
is the back of the head, the face you thought you knew, gone,
turned away. Scream all you want to.

How many satisfying meals turn out to be poisonous?
When we love something, isn’t it as if we have grown hands

especially to hold it? What have we ever touched
and not had to watch turn ugly
by the light of some sort of moon?

—Catie Rosemurgy