When I was yours, your curse was new.
At first there were only patches of fur,
soft as goose down, every other moon.
In the beginning only one eye changed
to that feral, alarming yellow; frantic
and hungry in the absence of light.

Regardless, I loved you piously.
I laid my throat beside your jaws nightly
and never feared the part of you
that the ignorant called evil.

Those nights when I'd wake up alone
only to find you at the dining table
half naked and spitting blood,
I never shamed you for where you'd been.
I wrapped my fingers tenderly around
your savage claws and lead you
wordlessly upstairs to bed.

Somewhere in the fields beyond your fence
the corpses of rabbits and barn mice
were rotting as we made love.