The day I inhaled toxic fumes was the day
I saw the machine for the first time.

A grotesque thing of gears and pipes,
laying underneath the earth's crust, breathing.

My hometown, everyone I knew,
were nothing but clockwork dolls on top of it.

Everything moving in its tracks,
repeating endlessly,
over and over and over and over until
those tracks rust with spilled blood.

I learned other things about
the nature of the place I exist in.

How this world is a gift from one lover to another.
The necessity of human sacrifice.

I was given the golden wheel as an icon.
It's like a saint's halo, is what you said.

Later, I stood in front of the meat aisle,
in awe of all the suffering you have orchestrated
only for me to be able to eat.

My beautiful cadmium yellow, my sunflowers, my honeycomb, my marigold, my sun and stars...