Nothing But an Animal

I thought I’d drown in guilt,

choke on the weight of what I’d done—

but murder only matters

when the body belonged to a man.

And he was not a man.

Men are made of soft hands

and warm hearts,

of gentle words that do not cut

like rusted teeth.

Men do not take

with clawed fingers and hungry breath,

do not tear skin like wolves

ripping into fresh meat.

Men are not beasts.

But he was.

He prowled in the shape of a lover,

spoke in the language of ownership,

painted love with a blade

and called it a gift.

“You owe me,” he whispered,

hands pressing down,

down,

down.

I know now—

I owed him nothing.

So I gave him what all rabid things deserve.

Steel, sharp and sure,

plunged into his belly,

watching red bloom across his skin

like poppies in the spring.

He gasped,

eyes wide,

body thrashing like a fish

gutted and flopping,

trying so hard to hold onto itself.

I wonder if I looked like that, once.

If he saw me struggle and thought,

"This is mine.

This is beautiful."

But there is nothing beautiful about a beast

that doesn’t know when to die.

So I made sure he did.

Steel met flesh again.

And again.

And again.

Until his breath rattled into silence.

Until his body stopped twitching.

Until there was no more fight left to take.

And I stood there,

drenched in the proof of his mortality,

waiting for guilt to find me.

But it never came.

Because nobody mourns the wolf

who wandered too close to the village.

Nobody weeps for the hound

that tasted blood one too many times.

They don’t call it murder

when you put down a rabid thing.

They call it mercy.