Shapeshifter's Love Song, by Danielle Boodoo-Fortuné

Your mother had nosebleeds as a child.
There was no one to part the copper clouds
of her hair, cool her temples
with oil and music.

Now she is the woman
who walks through walls
before your eyes.
She wears quiet colours
and sleeps with feral cats.
Your mother is the woman
who, from the corner of an eye,
could be a long- stemmed tiger lily
flaming against bricked-up sky.

You are your mother’s son
with those cat’s eyes
made for dark evenings
and lightless rooms.
Your feral dreams frighten you.
Sometimes, there is blood
in your throat when you wake.

Every now and then
you slip through a wall
and surprise yourself.
Plain stone turns opaline,
cries out in your hands.
Early mornings, the house
cannot hold you. The falling moon
seizes your raw body, reminds you
of your first, true shape.

And perhaps you chose me
because I, too, walk through walls;
because you sensed me burning
inside my tiresome skin
long before you knew the shape
of my hot, poemstruck heart.
Perhaps you recognized first
my shapeshifter’s smile,
like your own.

You see,
the wild thing is always near.

The mouth you find so beautiful
breaks into blades of bone
on lonely evenings.

On nights like this, no one
will part the dark feathers,
anoint my backbone with salt
to keep shapeshifters at bay.

On nights like this,
I am quiet, heavy-winged,
lost beneath the wet sackcloth
of shapeshifter’s skin.

Come with me,
come wild beneath the bone-white moon,
the shifting begins

with this….