our memories were beef too

our memories resembled the ground beef mom used buy at the gas station butcher store across the street from the museum celebrating recreational vehicles and all they’d done for our town providing a conceptual means of leaving eternally neglected in favor of observing the rotations of a ceiling fan or licking the grease from a day old fast food wrapper or sitting on a curb with someone we’d grown to resent or quitely succumbing to alcoholism

we fed what we could remember into the eager lips of a device that never turned off whose teeth always chewed

accepting our pathetic offering because the aimless hunger of our town never diminished because it was machine like we were

existing in a permanent state of transaction

eating because it was what our parents did eating to soak up the the poison or add to it eating because maybe the tainted meat would take our eyes and ears

and we could die in peace

gnarled ribbons of beef tumbling joylessly on some pre-determined path knotting in some places while hanging like frayed prayer flags in other places suffocating the next poor fuck in line for a moment of happiness

we forgot everything that brought us joy before forgetting how to breathe though I guess it would have preferred breathing be taken first as it was pointless without the memories that accompanied the inhales and exhales