angel de costa / d7 / (fin)

Silver-fanged; I was born a predator, 

but, not a wolf connoted with laurels and metaphors; i do not worship the moon sigils, do not howl to beast, and consider it a mistake whenever this tongue speaks of stars. no pelt draped upon these shoulders: 

i am bare, a ripple of movement, amorphous. these canines don’t gnaw on bones, they break them for the sake of breakage. i have no claws, only fingers that has practiced legerdemain.

throw me to a vicious pack
i’ll rise a hunter with
lupine carnage across
these calloused hands.

those kids abandoned on the dirt-ridden steps of an institution are schooled a tacit policy: you either become the predator, or prey. it’s a forest we live in, completed with hierarchies and food chains. remorse is a fool’s errand here, any kinds of mercy a fable. this isn’t a wolf pack; everything is purely for survival.

All-seeing eyes; I was born a hunter,

but, not a panther, not a nocturnal creature, i don’t care for speed. sunlight frets whenever i come to sight. there’s no need for haste in murder. slow and steady, gets the game. slow and steady, and untamed.

i memorized every petty detail verbatim about the kids at my previous orphanage: jessica, who fucked steve. fifteen years old kenneth and his growing, growing obsession with weed. the goodie two shoes liza got caught smoking cloves. apparently, when you live in the tree district, you learn to appreciate mother nature and her psychedelic gifts.

memorized every petty detail for the sake of wrapping them around my little finger. 

(liza shares her cloves from time to time; jessica is forced to make better life choices, kenneth forged a code of silence by making out with me.

he smelled of herbs,
broken childhoods,
and this desolate system
we’re caged in.)

hunting is more than accuracy and precision – it’s knowing your prey, its characteristics, persona and everything in between. and, who is better for the job than a boy unbeknownst to himself.

Songbirds in my throat; I was born a charmer,

i know how to lure out other’s desires, lullaby out the dark fantasies kept padlocked behind a red door. it’s a transferable trade and i earned mine from a pair of fiery palms, tracing the gibbous contours of my young body in the darkness, stealing pride amongst other things.

he was experienced,
i was exiting pubescence.

the deflowering was strange; he set my body on fire and extinguished it a second later with a wet, sloppy kiss. he hadn’t bothered to drop his alias in the foreign light of the morning, my arrogance refuses to question it. after we went out for waffles, i tiptoed out the diner’s bathroom window because fuck splitting the bill.

sometimes, casting aspersions and spells over a guy doesn’t work; i learnt this the hard way and there’s a circular, wine-hued mark on my back to prove it. long, tragic tale woven short: i tricked a rich boy back to his home and splendor, roofied his drink, forgot to increase the weak dosage, got stabbed near the spine with a smoky cigarette head.

(i am not perfect; 

not devoid of mistakes.) 

sometimes, i let others
 label me cigarette boy
           because of this 

No birthplace; I was born an imposter,

“we called you angel because it’s fucking adorable. i see how you’re completely unworthy of it now. The last name, on the other hand, is just, uh, an embellishment for angel, means the one who controls gods or shit.”

he breathes out smoke circles at my face;
i immediately break off to a series of coughs.

this man, damned to a creaking, rickety chair for his adult existence, is the reason for my cadaverousness. he goes by Christian but I politely call him jerk-face. he’s responsible for shipping doe-eyed orphans off to respective guardians. he even fails at tying his own shoelaces, which are now entangled together like phone-wires, so, imagine him at his job.

the one who reigns over gods,
it sounds utterly exhausting for my taste.

“i didn’t ask for a broken history check.” growl in my cadence, fangs unearthed; i am not here for chitchat –

although, visits to Christian can become frequent, mostly for conversation. he’s a fatherly figure to my miserable, hollow soul. 

i am so fucked up,
mosaicked at best.

“you said you’d get me out of the orphan system, Christian. i am eighteen now, i can raise myself.”

he clears his throat and cracks his knuckles, composing a disagreeing noise.

“we found you, last night, drunk off your ass in the dumpster.”

“i—.” instincts leap, tongue routinely weaving a falsehood. “i was dumpster hopping. it’s a hipster activity that’s going around these days.” fuck, that lacked every allure of convincingness.

“you’re staying, kid. maybe after you pass the reaping age, we’ll consider it.”

we’ll consider it

that’s a lie my ears have been told a thousand times. you’d assume i would be accustomed to it by now but hands knot into fists, and the bony protuberances lash out at his table, hitting it with a resonant crack.

“that’s what you told me a month ago!”

Christian rises to his feet at that,
defensive stance, flared nostrils.

i recoil.

Trapped, clipped wings; 
I was born a prisoner.