Bone china bowls holding bloody lamb bones. Your feet tap anxiously under the great mahogany table top. Fingers fly to forks as the door grinds open and father enters the cavernous dining hall.
He looks both vicious and regal, teeth bared, mane well groomed. Taking his place at the head of the table he invites his pride to rip into their prey. You hear conversations form, sickly spiders connecting the carnivores. Thin silk consisting only of meaningless observations and critical remarks. When individual voices have twisted and blurred into an intense roar, swift flicks of your knife land the meat before you into a napkin. Single swollen peas slide down into your stomach making small splashes. You think about the lamb in your left pocket as you continue to be ignored.
You would often visit farms when Mama was alive. She shepherded you around, lovingly explaining that cows made milk and chickens laid eggs. Mama never ate animals. When flowers formed delicate petals in spring she took you to feed the orphaned lambs with bottles of scorching milk.
Without anyone to guide them they stumbled dizzily around a paddock, only becoming confident when a visitor stopped to pay attention.
“Why do we kill our friends?” you had asked innocently.
“I believe we betray creatures trust because they don’t have voices to protect themselves” she replied.
“Humans are rarely held accountable for their ruthless practises.”
Once the bone china has been cleared adults retreat into their rooms. You exit through the kitchen door and into August air. Billion year old stars scatter the sky, chalk marks on an infinite blackboard. Twigs snap like fingernails underfoot. You kneel needing only a couple before striding forwards. After you’ve left the tree covered boundary which surrounds the old manor, hills role like waves. It is here that Mama sleeps under a stone cross. Surrounding her grave are hundreds of smaller crosses. They lean at odd angles below the glow of the moon, fragile as pale skin that covers blue veins. Finding an empty plot you use a crippled spoon to dig a shallow grave and bury the lamb. Crafting another cross you pay your respects to the dead.
“Poor animals, how jealously they guard their bodies, for to us is merely an evening’s meal, but to them is life itself.”
― T. Casey Brennan