How To Fucking Bite.

Can you tell I am a poet?

Let me teach you how to bite.I was bitten and turned into a bloodsucker. It started with a fever. I woke after seeing Death in my dreams with sweat dripping off the tips of my fingers. I had dreamt I was happy, and Death just happened to be there, staring through me. Happiness to me looked like the windows open, painted with green and ocean. And all my love is sitting in the kitchen, making me tea and eggs in the morning. Happiness to me looked somewhat like fulfillment and spring and haziness, and happiness to me still does. It’s why I was almost never. How can someone be happy if they still hadn’t gotten what they wanted. I counted on two hands what I wanted. I was a girl constantly giving lip to God for making me stoppable and human. I looked down at the bite. It went from red to violet. To bite, you think it means to eat, to consume raw. It doesn’t. I could feel the bruise that was left under the skin trying to heal closed. When it seemed like my arm was going back to brown, I looked like a deer again. I looked like a grazed down tree. It takes three gashes before I am injured and falling. I looked down at my heartwood, and the bruise was still felt. How do you heal a bruise? To bite, you think it means to suck blood. It doesn’t. The mosquitoes still spun through my hair, and waited for the dogs to fight so they could linger above their ears. But mosquitoes did not bite. I would live through every morning, anguished and burned to a pit like the others. Restless, but unmotivated, covered in blankets. I sank. I was bitten and turned into a bloodsucker this year. The bruise traveled throughout my body. I let myself ache. I let myself feel a growing pain run sticky past my spine. I figured my body was now a stain. I have been here, in bed, for two hundred fifty days, and the bruise was moving. No longer traveling, but moving, speaking, giving me a dance. I stood. I lifted. I felt myself hover above ground. With my head tilted back and my arms spread wide by my sides, I knew I was experiencing something biblical. Mythological. Spiritual. The bruises talked, they danced, and they lifted me up. To bite, you think it means to hurt. You think it is pain. It is not. Every breath felt cold, and my eyes were sensitive to the light of the waning crescent illuminating my windows. I felt like Venus rising from the water. Shocks graced my skin, and my mouth flew open. I tried not to shiver. I tried to welcome the exorcism. The bruises were replaced by freezing. I asked the devil not to kill me. You think to bite means to use teeth. You think to bite means to leave a mark. Let me teach you how to fucking bite. You need intention. You need to damage. You need to pollute. And then you must paint. I was bitten. I was transfixed by horror. To bite you have to transform something. Every bite leaves an imprint. After every bite you can never feel the same again. Pollute yourself with your own venom, and forget about being human. Take your arm, hold it to sunlight and ask yourself what you need to become stronger. You’re an animal for yourself. You deserve what it is that you want. Bite yourself, or you will be bitten first with rebirth. To bite you must be tempted. To bite is to take. And so you must Bite. You must breathe through your nose And Bite. The moon was new. Something stronger than me infected warmth into my body. I fell to the ground.

~ Trinity Hayes

Trinity Hayes is the founder of Venuus Diaries, and can be found @venuusian on Instagram. Her essay, "How To Fucking Bite." is the first among many essays (to come). Each issue Trinity Hayes writes an essay for the theme as her contribution to her own magazine. Trinity is a poet, a walking contradiction, a believer in something she's unsure of, a sinner and a saint. And above, she proves she is an animal.