From the Perspective of a Cow in a Feedlot

Hello. I am… whoever I am. I don’t know. All I know is that once, it used to be better. I have a vague remembrance of it. It was wonderful. I got to be in a place where I could eat everything on the ground, all the time. It was… I don’t remember what it was. But if anything, it tasted delicious. It tasted like the sun and the earth it grew from. Some of it was sweet, some of it wasn’t as sweet. But we would curl our tongues around it and pull and it would come up in our mouths by the mouthful. I was always with my mother, until the Ones separated us. And all I could feel was hurt. I don’t remember much of that time any more. All I know now is what is in front of me: Many other of my kind, everywhere. Very close to each other. Too close. But there is no other space. What I eat now is given. It tastes different than the sunshine and earth I used to taste, but I eat it. It is food. But now I am sick. I feel it. I don’t feel right. I know something is wrong, but it is food. There is a sweetness in it that I enjoy. So I eat it. I seem to be healthy enough. I don’t understand it, but I am. Others are not so lucky. They are very sick. They fall. They fall and lay in the mixture of earth and our waste. I smell the earth and it is similar to the earth from where I first was. But it is not so good. It does not produce the things that grew from the ground for me to eat. I am dizzy. There are too many of my kind, we are too sick. I rumble and I hurt. There is now more food that is brought to us. I am hungry, and so I eat. And so I eat. And eat. And eat. Every day of my life. Until one day… we are brought together into something else, some dark space. There is a rumbling and a shaking of the ground and a wisp of coolness from the spaces that separates us from outside. And I hope it will be better for us, wherever we are going.