Skin sheened with sweat, your father’s

knife in hand, an early November

sky above. Below that, a firmament

within an open animal belly, steam

drifts past your face into the mouths

of all animals that came before you.

Before a hunger. Before the gun.

They stand in gray-lit patchwork

of the afterlife over your shoulder,

their stomachs gone but full

of want—of all that you

and those who bore you

into this world, this land, now

possess. A boy advances, pointing

at the dead animal’s sternum,

at your sternum, then taps the space

where the heart hides. You are not

careful, he says, so cut away

from the body toward your goal:

a sky blooming inside a carcass

as if upon a cave’s wall. Beyond

its mouth nothing tender lasts—

was only ever protected by bone.