ALTERNATE NAMES FOR SHAPESHIFTERS - After Danez Smith

Leela Smelser

1. Lovely like an anglerfish

2. Liar, not that you can prove it

3. Easier to hate than to love

4. Tangled necklaces that form a butterfly in silver and bronze

5. The gap between breaths, the creaking in a ribcage

6. and the sick feeling that nestles below the ribcage, just behind the diaphragm and

the scream that lives inside it

7. The platonic ideal of a

8. human like a scarecrow in the dark

9. Creature as distinct from a human being

10. Creature as synonymous with person