Blood from one of you Things won’t obey when attacked. It’ll try and survive.

They find my desire monstrous,
my body twisted and disgusting.
I’m a pollution of the pure
and the known divine.
My intricate flesh glistens, red-
wet and raw in the albedo
of starlight and flare.

Needle flashing, blood abnormal,
I’m grotesque, a threat, unspoken
hiding just around the corner;
I’ve got bad intent.
Illness or assimilation–
I’m lurking in plain sight, turning
people into Things

like me.

Intimacy turned offensive;
connection made alien.
I’m the things you don’t understand
and more: I’m the things
you thought you understood and don’t.
I’m a boundless universe, vast
and strange, threatening to engulf
small, lonely beings.

I watch them turn on each other,
doubt, fear, mistrust
guns pointing,
fires burning,
blades flashing,
cords cut,
just in case one of them is a Thing

like me.