FLESH

I am eating.Picking with my fingers juicy pieces of meat off this chicken.I start with the ribcage enjoying strangely generous slabs of meat from strangly large ribs.The meat is delicious. I move on to the back. I burrow my forefinger and thumb into the cooked and tender flesh and slowly peal off a juicy morsel from the shoulder blade area. Only, this strangely large big boned chicken is no longer avian. It is human.It is Gil. He is sitting hunched facing away from me, his hands buried in his lap. His back, bent slightly, is flayed and missing some strips of meat from the upper area near his neck. The last strip I pull reaches his shoulder and meets gristle. It pulls out quite easily. Too easily, though the meat is obviously undercooked here. I am starting to feel nauseous as I wonder how Gil can manage to stay upright with his ribcage exposed like this, all the flesh no longer protecting his chest and stomach. I wonder what is helping those fragile bones hold his frame up. Nausea turns into horror.This is Gil. Wh what have I done? I wake up with the taste of vomit in my mouth. Gil’s back is to me. I stroke its perfect smoothness, listening to his steady breathing. I reach out and hug him, running my fingers through the sparse hair covering his perfect chest. I feel like staying off meat for a while.