I peel back the envelope flap like a Hershey’s Bar. 

The letter’s from the scientist, informing me 

he’s been told to put down the white-tailed doe, 

scotch the panther, their spots just beginning 

to fade. He says no one’s certain how it can be, 

but the two specimens are really the same animal. 

He’s being kind. We both know he means me. 

There are only so many ways you can beautify 

the truth. Inside me are a pair of zoic hearts 

pulling blood from a single pool. This maiden year, 

I was meant to have made them morph, but I couldn’t 

bring them to a shared field of grass without one 

making a meal of the other. So I let my homebody 

beasts know no bounds. And when they fought, 

I watched the bloodshed like a slasher film, 

or a documentary on tax fraud. I think of 

what I might become when the scientist is done 

and I’m brought back better. Maybe it’s the gulls 

swirling the air above me, this letter held tight

against the faunal theater roaring in my chest,

but I feel I’d quite like to turn into something 

small and volant and sure, with a mouth 

that only opens to scream or to sing.