When your friend decides
to become your lover,
it’s like a science fiction movie.

Before your very eyes,
he peels off his top layer,
the friendly human body-mask,
to reveal a skinless creature beneath.

His eyes are his eyes
but now they pierce you
like laser guns.

His lips are his lips,
his mouth is his mouth

but what once joked
now coats you in wet touches,
the slime of a tongue,
action not intelligence

and the voice you could pick out
of a crowd
plummets to moans and whispers.

Your friend is gone.
He left without goodbye.

And the body-snatcher
who took his place
is greedy, rushed,

probing for evidence
to take back to his home planet
before morning comes.

 

Jenna-Marie Warnecke is a poet, essayist and fiction writer whose work has appeared in Narratively and Potluck Magazine. She lives in New York City.

Image Credit: Douglas Alves