Trigger warning: dysphoria, light gore.

I am a monster on my period.
It’s body horror in its most literal sense.
It rips my insides apart
and forces them
out of me.

It is a monstrous blend
of masculine and feminine.
That this curse exists inside of me
marks me as a ‘woman.’
But the rage
the agonising pain
the viscera and gore and despair
is so strikingly opposed
to the dainty picture of womanhood
that we’re fed since birth
that we can’t reconcile that both can exist
in the one body.

Once a month I transform
into a beast
and there’s nothing
romantic about it.
I’ll bite the heads off anyone
who looks at me wrong.
I’ll crouch on all fours and howl
with claws gripping
at my abdomen

I crave blood; I’m losing too much.
I’ll take it from anywhere.
I’ll eat a steak raw
to get my fill.

I want to tear out the part of me
that put me in such pain,
that vessel designed
to host a parasite.
It’s as useless to me
as an appendix.
But oh, no –
I can’t get rid of it.
That mass of tissue and blood
is considered holy.
What a waste of a fertile
young woman.

Some sick irony reminds me this is when
my testosterone levels are at their highest.
Isn’t that what I wanted?
Aren’t I a ‘man’ now?

No.
No.
I don’t want this.
I want to be a blank slate
but this transformation paints me
with a brush dipped in red and pink.
So I’ll keep tearing through flesh and bone
until they see me
for the monster I am.

About the author

Monty is a writer from rural Australia. They have a fascination with the macabre, mushrooms, and mythology. Their work tends to focus on their queer identity and their experiences with chronic pain and PCOS. 

Photo by Madison Oren on Unsplash