eat dead things

by Sara Caskey

Long ago, I learned to stop empathizing with the things I eat, and even learned to prefer most things dead. Last week on the August-hot Potomac, we pulled up a bushel of blue crabs, silt, and a catfish, 20 inches long and tail whipping. I was thinking in black-and-white, then, but more specifically, Bette Davis face slaps, loud and satisfying… So I held up the fish close just to see, and wanting. Afterward, a no-shirt man took it out back to the red shed, to that workbench stained with blood, and skinned it, still-moving, breathing all of the water out of the air. “You have to kill them alive,” he told me. So I thought de-humidify me until I am de-humanized, re-hydrate me again in the river, when it’s time for dinner, and I will change my clothes to look nice at the table. I watched its skin peeled off like my cuticles sometimes do, and made a sound like pain, and I realized I was still hungry, that living things make me hungry more than dead, and that I am no better than a no-shirt man, or his father, or you, and no worse than I was yesterday.

Photo of Sara Caskey

BIO: Sara Caskey is originally from Rhode Island, but currently lives in Richmond, Virginia. Her creative work is upcoming in Beyond Words Magazine. As a freelancer, she's covered everything from celebrity news to real estate on websites like The List, Glam, Islands.com, and Homes.com.