I know animals are dumb
but when
our hearts ache
they understand.
Every birthday we celebrate
is a milestone to our arrogance.
We evolved
to track prey
in the tall grasses of Africa
then built a world so vast
it swallowed the horizon
with our god complex.
I say it with my nervous system:
no one is pure of Animalia.
They call it
the Y-chromosome bottleneck--
how all our genes are founded
on trauma.
So meaning in our lives
depends on
sense of self. Now talk
go on
about how time
repairs the damages.
Go on
about how beautiful sadness is.
But
here’s the thing about our
collective empathy:
we all know
in our bones
in our genetic code
the devastation
the desperation
of every factory-farmed animal.
