Broth

Dad's work gave everyone 
a turkey for Christmas, 
leading up to the holiday,
for weeks the bird would 
perch enveloped by ice
in the corner of the freezer.

Early in the morning &
late at night I would go 
check on the bird, running
a hand over the plastic wrapping,
feeling the little bumps across 
the bird's pinkish pucked skin.

On several occasions I climbed
into the freezer with the turkey,
curled up just like the bird 
& we chatted about death.
I lied & told the turkey I was
vegetarian. It mattered little
to him. He was okay with 
ending for his body.

I told him that mom was great
at roasting turkey and that none
of his meat would go to waste.
I explained that we even save all 
the bones to make broth with.

With our conversation over,
I went to crawl out, but this
time my body wouldn't budge,
frozen solid just like the turkey.

Rocking back & forth into 
a bag of frozen green beans 
& a bag of breaded chicken fingers,
I tried desperately to escape.

The turkey told me I had
to stop. He said that for animals,
being eaten is God's will. He imagined
a heaven for all the animals
that human fed on. In his 

heaven all the animals would 
have open fields to explore, 
no holidays or gravy or broth, 
just animals.

Am I an animal? I asked.
But before he could answer 
my mom scooped us both up from
the fridge, left us to un thaw
in the sink, the melting gave us 
the illusion of being alive.

& when the dinner was over
all our parts were put into 
mom's great steel pot; the bones,
the gristle, the fat, the tendons.
Our bodies mixed together in the boil.

The turkey's voice danced in & out
of my head. I saw the golden broth
being poured on in heaven, God 
putting us back together, one bone
at a time. My family drank soup.