Love is a Nattlefield.

you were becoming more and more jaguar. Your side toes hung like dew-claws. When you were hungry, you slid down the tree in which we perched, and left the woods in all four legs for the first time. You returned with blood matted in the short brittle hairs along your jawbone. I wanted to tell you how lately I’ve been feeling compressed, as if into a miniature cube, unable to move my limbs, unable to see clearly, but you were too animal at that point, too blood on your jawbone. This was one million years ago. Now most everything is jaguar. There’s one in the tundra bursting with hundreds of beautiful pink blossoms. There’s one slowly eating a hole into your lower intestine.

—Zachary Schomburg