I first drank blood when I
was six years old,
it was Jesus’ in a
goblet and I held it to my
lips like that was my baptism,
sacred and holy and
every day since

I craved the smell of it –
pungent and like rusted screws
it stuck to me, the taste was
bitter and the only way I
could recreate it was through
torn cheeks ripped with my own teeth
or road kill I found on
side roads I’d take at night,

and sometimes,
if I couldn’t find a dead raccoon
I’d hit a deer on purpose,
comfort it as it took
its last breaths,
pet its doe eyes closed and
dig my nails into it,
letting the blood stain
my hands red –

animals were easier than humans to hurt, until I met you.

You were this soft thing
I hated from the
very beginning but I
kissed you like I
needed you and you
kissed me like you
needed me back,

and I’d bite your lips till they
bled and tainted my tongue,
and one night we were watching
swans in a lake and in
one swift motion I took
a cross to your head,
letting my hands find a home
on your neck, burying them into it
like buckshot in a deer
or like nails in Jesus’ wrists
when he was hung.

You didn’t get to put up a fight,
I kissed you next to that lake,
you melted into me like
I was a maggot rooting myself
into your soft flesh,
belly up like a cockroach
on its deathbed,
hands reaching towards
the moon for a greater being,

and I took your skin and
made a pretty purse out of it,
it looks like the color of your
eyes sometimes, the soft brown
that fawns have when they
are born full of innocence,
and for the first time in the
months that I knew you,
you were beautiful.