Hot arid desert air robs my mouth of moisture.  My heart is heavy, like the sun sinking down over the horizon.  This will be my last day as a free man.  Tonight, I surrender to evil, and for evil.  How do you tell someone, you are willing to sacrifice everything for them.  The world seems to be saturated with people who only want to take something away.  Money, property, dignity, bodies, and sometimes children.  I don’t understand it.

At dinner, I am even more scared.  It is difficult to eat.  I try to explain things, using what is in front of us.  Food and drink.  Wheat grows in the sun, drinks nutrients from the wet soil, but dies in moon a lit harvest.  A life is cut, its components battered and reshaped to feed someone else.  Someone else who didn’t drink nutrients, who didn’t grow, who doesn’t know they are dying.  The drink, grapes bulge on vines.  Sun, soil, and time, silently produce the fruit day after day.  When the time comes, the fruit is ripped from its source, taken away from its home.  It is crushed and changed into drink.  It replenishes the dying for another moment.  People didn’t do anything to deserve the meal.  They didn’t create it, and they don’t understand it as it is being consumed.

To have power and not use it, demonstrates the most strength.  My love is stronger than my fear.  I feel like I am going to throw up.  Everyone else at dinner is bragging about resilience, accomplishments, and position.  They don’t understand, I will be dead soon.  I fight back the tears.  I am late for a meeting in a garden.  I have to talk through what is happening.  I am already late.  Dinner is left on the table.  Bread lies torn and crumpled, on the table and on the floor.  Some pieces are uneaten.  Drinks are tipped and spilled, red liquid coats the floor.  Wheat and grape, may die in vain, yet they wait. The table remains set.

Copyright © 2017 Zachary W Gilbert