Kathrynn Mckenzie turns the usual idea of love upside down. Instead of warmth or comfort, the speaker describes love as an illness, something that infects you, boils your blood and drives you "crazy." The comparison to mad cow disease is blunt and a little shocking, and it sets the tone: love here is not romantic but dangerous and almost grotesque.
The poem follows a slow decline. At first love might "feel like you're in heaven," but the speaker insists this is a trick, because underneath you are "slowly losing yourself." The images of a "zombie" and a "stranger" suggest a person who has stopped being who they were, acting without control. Eventually they "break" and "lose everything."
The speaker sounds bitter, warning and hurt, as if speaking from painful experience, though the poem itself doesn't tell us that. The short, flat lines feel cold and clinical, like a diagnosis. The mood is bleak and unsettling, and the last line, "the destruction of mankind," pushes the fear to an extreme.