i can’t love like a wild animal

after unbodied by billy-ray belcourt

i love like a lion prowling savannahs, seeking prey because what is love if not teeth piercing skin, digging into flesh, slurping up blood. this is love & i am gazelle.

he says i want you to be predictable, i want you to make sense. as if sense is an oasis & i’m a desert without a beginning, middle or end. i love

like a starving seal, swimming under melting ice. please accept me, scars & thin skin. i tire

of bodies, their molecules of sweat as they fall from slopes of his brows & onto my chest. i tire of loving like a turtle without a shell. i can’t

love in moans or areolas, i can’t love like a wild animal, not anymore. i crave

burrowed connections & a hole in the ground i can call my own.