My son and I passed a tractor and trailer truck that was travelling in our direction toward town tonight. We were settled in the left lane. To our right was trailer consisting of industrial cages, stacked upon each other and fettered well to the trailer like Legos. Each cage contained a pod of live chickens. They were as white as pillow cases. Almost too white. At some imperceptible point of their short lives they had become homogeneously bleached and classified as poultry. They bleach the life out of death. I looked into the piercing left eye of one of the doomed birds who was staring bravely out into the cold blowing night air at the lights emanating from a gargantuan shopping complex to our left. I swear to space and time themselves that she seemed genuinely interested in these strange new artificially illuminated surroundings that fell away and then rekindled as its roaring monster traveled down the highway toward town. A sadness began to bubbled up inside me as my little boy watched intently and then mused aloud about a chicken's improbable ability to pick a lock and escape the sickening slaughter that awaited it. This is a horror that sustains you, little boy, I mused in silent retort. But not me. But it is little consolation as I arrive home and apply the dialectic to my new and even darker history, because there's a horror that sustains me, too.
