Must a Violence

If You Love an Animal

23 If You Love an Animal I’m making myself cry. I’m looking at myself in the mirror crying, which makes me cry. “Look, I’m crying,” I sob. But no one hears me. No one. Because I’m deserted and neglected and alone. And my face is dirty. I’m a tear-stained orphan and my last meal was bark from a tree. “If you’re taking care of an animal, be careful not to drop that animal,” I said aloud, people coming and going and that little animal in its cage on its soiled cedar chips, shifting its cedar chips from one side of the cage to the other, “if you’re going to take care of an animal, remember to pick up that animal every day and not to drop it,” I advised, “be careful to support that animal as you lift it into the air, to make it feel safe, it is leaving the ground unexpectedly and without its choice necessarily, it is important to handle an animal properly.” Before I get too overcome with my ability to enjoy the sunny day, I’m going to have to re-read my diary and also think about injustice. I’m going to need to conceal my diary beneath my 24 ragged garments and transport it into the forest where I will build a lean-to of sticks and call it my home. This is where I live now, here with the ferns that bend and sway. I pulled a tire out of the stream and dragged it back to my fire pit, putrid filth spilling out from inside as the wheel rolled. A stripe of stench across my face like war paint. I hammered a nail into a tree. I shall hang my coat here as I clear the brush from my meager shelter. I live in the forest. The animals understand me and the leaves make gentle crunching sounds underfoot and the bare branches make patterns in the sky. “If you’re taking care of an animal, clip its nails very carefully so you don’t get too close to the quick,” I instructed, “you want to get close enough to the quick that the animal can leap and run with no discomfort at all, you see an animal really should not know about its nails, that its nails might be a problem, an animal should not experience even a vague awareness that its nails might be holding it back,” I went on, “in the wild, an animal would wear down its nails naturally, with all its goings-on upon the rock-strewn ground in the landscape of boulders and moss, with its 25 scratching of tunnels from dirt or scratching of insects from bark, in the forest an animal would keep its nails trim without even trying, its nails would take care of themselves as a natural by-product of self-sufficiency, a reward of survival.” I’m bleeding onto some sheets of newsprint to record the drama of my bleeding. My nose is gushing blood but I refuse to pinch the bridge. I insist on bleeding freely. No one can stop me. I live in the moment. I am an orphan crouched in a corner eating a crust of bread off a broken piece of tile. I bleed over the pages of the Daily News blown toward me. When the pages dry, I will seal them in envelopes addressed to my pen pals. I’ve never met my pen pal in Sweden but her name is Angela Petrov. I have a pen pal in Egypt named Tamer El Said, one in Greece named Isil Miritzi, and one in Phoenix, Arizona, a girl who was my friend before she moved away. “If you love an animal, why would you leave it alone in its tiny cage with all its waste, it’s doing its best to keep itself clean, but there’s only so much 26 a small domestic animal can control about its habitat,” I hissed this with a hint of accusation, “why do you let your animal chew away a patch of its own fur, turning and chewing and chewing, and the bottoms of its feet raw with sores from the wire mesh, you say so many things but if you love an animal, you should give it fresh water and a food dish that doesn’t flip up into...