I hear footsteps along hard, wooden floorboards.
The creak of a step marks your location,
I await the dispersal of darkness,
The call of light;
My time to shine.
‘What is on the menu today?’
I ask with a glimmer of my sharpened,
Excited blade.
You wrap your hands, not steady, but trembling
Around my cold, yet secure handle.
Your gaze is reflected back at me,
Though my anticipation becomes confusion,
As I see no meal awaiting my service.
No sizzling pork? Or full vegetables,
Ready to be made undone?
‘What is my purpose?’
I ask this as you make your way
On trembling legs outside of the kitchen
To an area outside of my domain.
Voices rise as an argument ensues,
I am tilted towards your opponent,
With your hand around me tightening until
I feel myself suffocating and trembling
Under your vice-like grip.
Tensions build, voices howl vehemently,
Until, until:
My work begins with the familiar slice of
Flesh, with the dripping of juice off my blade.
I give in to my excitement, slurping it up
Like a wino with a thirst for the bottle.
But then…
Why do I hear screaming?
Why is there so much more crimson than naturally expected?
Why was the meat still warm?
No, not meat, not at all— a body, alive, breathing,
Now wriggling under the weight of their own suffering.
‘What have I done?’
I can feel your grip around my hilt loosen,
Then, I am falling, landing in the murk of blood,
Coppery and crimson.
Reflected in my sharpened gaze, I expect
To see horror filling your eyes,
But instead,
Why is there glee?
In time, an excruciating passage of time,
The body grows cold,
Its eyes lull back into a glazed, empty stare
That haunts, burying deep, ingraining into memory.
I thought that was it; over.
I was wrong.
You pick me up again, your
Hold more confident, more determined;
Purposeful.
Bending down towards the body,
I glide along flesh in a timeless dance
I thought I knew the steps too perfectly.
But this, this is not chopping up vegetables,
Nor preparing meats for your next meal,
This is a mutilation of a body,
The vanquishing of a life;
I am not in the business of taking lives.
And yet, what is this hunger I feel taking over me?
As the blood runs off me from the tap’s water,
I feel a sense of relief, mixed with
Flutters of disappointment.
Returned to my blackened sanctuary,
I am left to ponder—
‘Will I ever again taste the copper of blood?
Will there ever be another pained scream as I
Slice open the forbidden red flower demanding to sprout?’
When the light unfurls
And you reach for my services once more,
It is disappointment I feel
As a mere dicing of vegetables
Is all I am employed for.
Through time,
My hunger will grow and gnarl,
As my mind returns to those white canvas eyes
Where vacancy, in the end, was all to be housed.
I long for the day when again,
I will feel your sweat-coated palms around me,
Sliding unsteadily in preparation for the kill.
And, when at last I hear the noise of rising voices,
I know my time again has come.
As the light flutters in through the darkness,
My blade, sharp and ready glitters in a grin
Of rueful excitement. I am ready
To slice through something livelier
Than meats and veg.
