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This is a poem about werewolves.
You know those monsters in pop-culture?
The ones born in folklore and then cut and pasted into a collage of themselves?
Something easily recognised, but not easily understood.
You know, the people with something savage inside them, simmering under the skin and howling for release.
The pop-culture collage will tell you that werewolves are monsters.
That change is a dirty word.
Werewolves are bloodthirsty liars, who won’t peel back their skin to show you their “true selves”.
They know they’d scare you, they know their ugliness, they know the danger of truth.
They know the truth of shame.
Some werewolves are born with the moon slipping through their veins
Like the fingers of a mother sliding through her childs while they cross the road together.
Mouth full of teeth meant for tearing, maybe through flesh, maybe through expectation.
Claws in the place of nails, soft and blunt with youth but sharpening with every full turn of the moon.
They either know who they are the first time they see her glowing like an orb in the night sky, bathing them in the soft light where they will see themselves in sudden clarity
Or they will look back on a childhood of fang-indented furniture and torn clothing and a single day of every month that’s blurred and hazy
And they will recognise that they have always been different.
Some are bitten, the moon injected into them without knowledge or understanding
There is confusion and pain here.
There is “but my teeth used to fit in my mouth” here.
There is “but my voice used to sound like my own, when did my words turn into growls?” here.
There is “i was born someone else, but i am not that person anymore.” here.
I do not remember when I was bitten.
I do remember my first full moon, when my clothes no longer fit right, my skin tearing at imaginary seams, my heart aching beneath an unfamiliar ribcage.
The moon burned that night, something come to life inside me that I buried under sweaters and cosmetics.
If my nails are black, maybe you won’t notice that they aren’t nails at all.
See, the thing about the moon is that she changes. She is never the same.
Even moonlight is sunlight turned gentle caress, a loving hand through the fur of the beasts that howl to her, a song of pain and pride and questions and answers.
There is something savage beneath my skin, and it is a part of me, no it is me, and people will always be afraid of that.
But the wolf is not something you live with. It is something you are.
It is not something you can bury for long. It will tear its way out of you every full moon, it will turn you into a monster.
It will turn you into a monster, the way a cornered animal becomes a monster, willing to do anything to survive.
Eventually you will wake up in the morning with the taste of blood in your mouth, the fading ache of the hunt in your muscles, the truth carved into claw marks in the door frame.
That does not have to be a horror story.
Wolves are not all teeth and blood and hunt. They are also soft fur, and intelligent minds, and family.
There are wolves that bare their fangs at humans, who march down the street on full moons, uncaring of who sees them, because the nature of werewolves is to overcome.
The nature of werewolves is to be strong even when your body is fighting against you.
The nature of werewolves is to know the taste of blood before you know the taste of love.
One day you will know the taste of love.
One day you will find yourself in the moonlit woods, staring at a pair of your favourite jeans, reading your name written in blood across a mirror and you will know your reflection.
And you will know the taste of love.
This is a poem about werewolves.
Those monsters from pop culture, born in folklore, cut and pasted into a collage of themselves.
The people with something savage inside them, simmering under the skin and howling to be seen.
The pop-culture collage will not tell you tales of struggle
Of lost identities and digging to find yourself in the carcass of the wolf that bit you.
The pop-culture collage will tell you that werewolves are monsters,
And still be surprised when wolves are shot in the street.
A POEM ABOUT WEREWOLVES // t.m"
in honour of pride month here's a re-post of one of my favourite poems that i've written
