All Bloody Red

“Do not eat me, Mama,”

meowed my black-furred child, Lala —

the Queen Cleopatra of our feline home.

“Do not eat me, Mama,”

echoed my blue-eyed Siamese, Coco,

already frightened of the world alone.

“Do not eat us, Mama,”

hisses mixed with cries

poured from my felines.

But why?

My heart broke in confusion:

“My pets are my children — I love you too much!

I eat only creatures who do not look like us,

even though they do not want to die as such.

A pig, for example,

whose flesh is too close to mine;

or the brown-eyed cow with tears in her eyes,

chasing her baby taken away,

because I believed her milk was mine.”

“Do not eat us, Mama,”

continued my pets.

“We do not have colors like plants,

nor are we full of healthy chants.

We are not full of nutrients,

nor packed with antioxidants.

Beans and rice will do you better,

they keep you strong and never fetter.

We are just flesh.

If you kill us,

we are the same inside —

all red,

all bloody red.”

“All bloody red,” I whisper in my mind.

“Just like a pig,

or a baby veal.

All bloody red,

all grasping for life,

all begging not to die.”

With both hands, I pet my Lala.

With both hands, I pet my Coco.

With my eyes closed,

with a sorrowful heart,

I pet my “food” gently, not hard:

the playful piglet,

the mama cow,

the fish I let suffer without water,

the hen who is protecting her chicks just now.

I wanted to vomit from pain —

the pain of realizing.

But there was a brighter way,

not endless apologizing.

Instead of sorrow, again and again,

I could stop causing pain.

I could stop cutting veins.

I could stop taking lives in vain.

I could.

And I would.

And, from now on,

I will — for good.