try & watch a horror film from the point of view of the monster. imagine, every man shrieks at the sight of you, children throw stones & laugh at your blood, a mob forms on your doorstep with pitchforks & forceps just for fun or from fear. this is your wretched life. you didn’t know your name until they named you. didn’t know your teeth were fangs until they tried to pry them from your pliant skull, didn’t know your hunger was so unclean. so you learned to grow in the dark as darkness grew in you. your mirror a massacre of light, your appearance a film reel perverted in flames. it’s not til you love a boy & make him like you that you’re able to curse the civilization that assembled your fiction, to gaze upon your own grotesque elegance & laugh, to love the rough-hewn battle of your haggard breath. you child of the axe blade buried in your breast, you story men tell to explain away the darkness & give it depth. you apotheosis of the oldest protest hymn. what is the ocean besides a puddle without you in it? what is the grim forest besides a factory of trees praying to be sheared into paper? what is your mouth but a home, but a haunted motel, but a siren of terrible righteous noise. now the men who once tormented you, tremble at your sound, dark horse mounting its unkind rider & when you’re finally ready to spread wide your wild red wings, it ends. some idiot girl pierces your faggot carapace with her car, or sword, or word in a dead language for fun, from fear & audiences in darkened theatres release a collective sigh of relief as you perish, as credits roll back like eyes & you’re reminded this is a movie, you die onscreen every night. try & get to that last scene without laughing or weeping or eating the dark alive.
