Innards

I watch you brush buttermilk on the dead bird in the sink.
The cup of buttermilk is at its end. We are at our end.
The chicken has met its end, already.
I eat my wheat conglomerate and watch you debone.
I don’t feel superior— just sad, just a little hungry.
Let us resist, I whisper to my core.
It rumbles back, echoing the Earth’s own expiring innards.
The Earth, it will end too, and for us.
If I asked you whether you thought that romantic or wasteful,
you’d say, “I don’t understand.”
As I so far understand it, some of us
were made to feast; some of us
to survive off the scraps; some of us
to starve off subtractions, abstractions, and art supplies.
I give a silent prayer for the chicken, and then still aching,
all of its children.
You are grasping at a piece of skin, tearing it
with the tips of your glorious, unaffected fingers—
I loved this first about you, your blasé steadiness,
your unfamiliarity with remorse.
I watch you drop the skin into your mouth with precision.
I watch you chew.