My friend doesn’t eat animal

meat that still looks like the animal.

The animal, dead, cannot come back

to life. At least not without

a miracle in which you can turn

your fingers into god and jigsaw

the pieces back together. With crabs

or lobsters, though, you can skip

the puzzle. I am not going to pull

a façade over anyone. I don’t contain

much empathy for such things,

but I am moved by my friend who does.

She could fit a turtle into her human

shell. And not just a turtle, but a giant beach

of turtle eggs, who could then hatch

and all make it to the ocean. That world

seems a lot kinder and a lot more

beautiful. Everything eats not to live

but for joy. At some point in history,

a single organism existed—call it God

or call it a microorganism—and then

at some point it split, and some point

beyond that one of the splits looked

at the other and wanted to eat them.

These days it’s called love. Or war.

These days I look at something

and it might look back.

​