The bright flight seared —smeared— the ink that stained my browned body. Coordinates skewed lat for long, feathers darkened. Yellow and sharp, beak now cute and rounding. Talons remain but feathers black now for night’s plunging stead of day, and eyes to match—keen machined fine instruments turned black fat saucers, hungry dinner plates.
“What creature becomes me?” Every internal word echos now twice, once each ear; where once I spoke by clear and ringing siren —a hard and high note, either death from above, last squall, a late warning to prey, and only for my pleasure, that of sweetly frightened sour’d blood, thalmic delight wringed like lime bitters into victim’s vein— or else the dry quiet of the hunt. Prey were prey and mice, mice: meat. Now each thought rings and again, my skull a chattering bell, like women bickering in a dialect of clicks. Yes, a madman has come to lay down in my bed beside me. How will I hunt in peace? “How will I hunt in peace?”
Instincts are a funny thing, opposite an echo in every way. The cut of the claw. The bite itself. Gratification per se. Indeed, how can one operate in naked nature whilst some democrat ‘s high heels click the halls of his mind? The hungrier bird eats —does it not?— while eloquence starves.
I look down at my arm’s skin where lines once drawn finely now bend into circles. I make a trace of them but a maze has manifest and I’ve not yet found my way through. My god, why hath Thou forsaken me? Every row was a heartbeat as I passed overfield, over prey. Where is that lump in my vein for life? Where is my knowing confidence to kill? Circles from hard and straight lines. What feminine travesty is this? A curse to circle and not dive?