Alien being–with fingers like flippers

to slip into your prey’s carapace–

what is your intention with my body?

Your eyes of bronze pearl flip me 

upended when I reach your calcified retina 

like stringing up a fish by its tail.

You have evolved to capsize me 

with sight before you have seen me. 

Can we communicate though we are partitioned

by millennia of selective divergences,

having solely existed in space 

unoccupied by the other? I understand

in this moment of junction 

you could gash me open with your bite

of spiny stars, it’s happened before–

my flesh flaying in silence

amidst the vacuum of shared darkness. 

I wear teeth marks like scales.

Is it safe to assume that lust 

is the offering of oneself to be consumed?

Matthew Buxton