You find yourself in an odd place,
between a rock and a hard thing,
on a plane,
between a morality and a sausage,
between Cairo and Singapore.
You had requested a vegetarian meal
because you had been moved by the words,
“The question is not ‘Can they think?’,
the question is ‘Can they suffer?’”
and when you killed a small spider
and your friend asked you Why?,
you didn’t have an answer.
So now there is a sausage on your plate—
No, it is in the middle of the air,
floating before you
and the man on your right doesn’t want it
and the flight attendant could take it back
but he couldn’t take it to a starving child or back to its mother
so it is going to float in the middle of the air before you
until you decide to put it into a plastic bag or into your mouth.
You reason that killing and wasting is worse than just killing
but then again is it worse to outwardly support the world that eats meat
than inwardly know that your chewing means only that
you respect the hands that prepared it,
the hands that killed it unnecessarily,
and the mouth that screamed as it was dying for you
(though you didn’t ask it to)?
How much karma is in a sausage?
How much fat and how much flesh?
Do you really value efficiency that much?
You’re not in the Donner Party.
You won’t die if you don’t eat it, and:
If you did die, would you really rather be eaten by vultures than cremated,
or left alone, to peacefully push up roses?
Which one would eat your eye?
Then, suddenly, a sausage plops down on to your plate with a loud Batmanesque THUD!
You cut it and chew it
and try to decide whether it’s more efficient
to enjoy it or not to enjoy it and when you are through,
the man on your left points to his
with his plastic knife and asks, “Do you like these?”
(Because I don’t.)