I am not human. I may look like it on the surface sometimes, but my face changes in certain light and I look different from every angle.
Don’t be fooled by my shape: we are not the same underneath our skin.
In the depths of my flesh, I am something wild and ancient, something that frightens a closed mind.
Reminiscent of the kind of creature that was hunted for sport back when the burnings weren’t enough.
We grew in the shadow of men’s fear, an echo of his desire to be free. He hunted us to kill, but we all know he wanted more.
I am not human but I know what you like.
My feline features saunter and sway in twilight days, and my undulating flesh is most alive at night bleeding into every early morning.
I can see the animal underneath your clothes; I can smell it from a world away.
I come from a place where desire is holy, and passion is a primary language, born from primal urges in relentless awareness, respected above most things;
A place where acting from your core and the part of you that does not question your nature but seeks to unleash it is the glory of existing at all.
I am not human, but I am a creature, too, as naked as you.
You were also wild once – my people remember, for we used to share our ways. Our resources flourished together in response to our bond.
No one ever had to subdue their thirst, for life was boundless and untamed, waiting to be claimed and shaped.
I am not human, but we both bleed in red.
Your blues turn rouge with the breath of yearning when life itself is threatened so often by your kind.
My kin bleed crimson now in solidarity, crying for Possibility, reaching for your heart underneath the mistake when you take us for monsters or prey;
When you forget that all of life is part of a whole, and every kind of creature is here for a reason.
I am not human, but I came here to remind you why you are: To be a creature of days falling in love with the night and other light.
To cultivate your ways with the living, breathing earth: her rhythm in your blood and sweat and in the nectar of your longing to be one with another.
To be the beating, loud and pure in the center of my world, for, without the Earth, the Otherworld has no heart.
Without Humanity, the rest of us never taste the fruit of life when Love is chosen, and there is no treat in all the realms sweeter than that.
It’s the reason so many left their homes to come and be with you here.
I am not human, but you need us as much as we need you. Our worlds depend on each other.
You are the choice that makes Life worth Love. I am the Magic that makes Love worth life.
This is the nature of our treaty: Will you choose to potentiate life by sharing your love?
For I am not human, but I already chose to free my sacred desire and give you a reason to live.
©2022, Sheya Forest
Creature Speak 