Guard Your Throat, Your Heart

You think I am a girl.
A girl with soft arms and freckled shoulders,
smelling of perfume and walking over the round earth in a fragile hopscotch.
To you, I am all gentle hands and broken eyes.

But the moon does not have to be full, for the hair on my arms to rise
and my freckles to feather into a silver fur coat.
You need only turn your kind, red heart and green eyes towards me,
and I am afraid for you.

I am already tasting your hot blood in the back of my throat,
licking at the pulse of your white throat,
breathing brown curls.

You want me to be my soft defenses, when really, I am canine-toothed.
Salivating.
Hunger.

And the moon is not yet full.