Animal

Get it under your fingernails

Sink back against its teeth like it never bit you

Let desire do the work it was built for

It’s summer, so kiss a stranger under an orange street lamp

Find the part of them that the light never touches (touch it).

Locate all the ways they are coded

Pre-civilisation, beyond language

Feel their private needs shimmer under your palm

The alien weight of them

how they articulate want,

how they cup a shoulder,

how they hook a thumb into your cheek to remind you’re not dead.

Lay hands.

Shiver backwards into that black chasm reason can’t reach.

Collapse into the moon, the cosmic riptide

Let them tell you

You’re everything I’ve been looking for

and believe them.

Feast after famine. Promise you’ll never go hungry again.

Honey,

you want to know what’s beneath the skin of everyone you meet

To pop the hood, flay the ego from the bone, ruthless

until all is stardust and need.

You come alive when the inside turns out

Their sinewed pelt melting all over the carpet

because of how your particular body looks,

drowned in moonlight

on this particular evening.

Watch their breath catch

when they see the animal in you rise to meet the hunter in them.