careful, i bite

intensity dressed as love, instinct dressed as desire

“I confuse instinct for desire—isn’t bite also touch?”
― Natalie Diaz, Postcolonial Love Poem

face of an angel
“be careful”
they’ll warn you
“she bites”

to love
or be left hunted
easier to bare my teeth
than to be held

untouched by apathy,
intensity
is my nature
i could never be your peace

call me baby
flutters through my body
cheeks heat
pink and reckless

your sweetness lingers
a pulse under my ribs,
the chills down my spine
dripping honey kisses

there’s no safety,
only the heat of the thrill,
run,
or learn to love the chase

a warning dressed in lace
fever in a mask of devotion
leave a mark
and call it love

taught too young
that instinct is desire
and desire
disguises itself as adoration

canines at my skin
blood down your chin
the taste of freedom
feels a lot like forever

always has its scars too

---

I’ve been thinking about how we’re taught to recognize love, and how easily we mistake desire for connection. From a young age, we learn that romance is supposed to look like intensity, urgency, and hunger. The rush. The chase.

Love itself feels instinctual to me. We are born wired for connection. But romantic love exists in a grey area—shaped as much by myth as by feeling. I can’t decide if we’ve overcomplicated it with rules and expectations, or oversimplified it into chemistry and thrill.

Somewhere along the way, instinct takes on the face of devotion, passion starts to look like permanence, and the lines between tenderness and hunger blur in ways that feel beautiful and dangerous.

This poem sits inside that blurred line.

this writer runs on love, an abundance of unfelt feelings & way too much coffee—this supports at least one of those things!