I found a brick in my backyard yesterday.
Red like a heart
And pulsating in the sun.
I bent down and felt it breathing,
Two small lungs
Rising in a familiar rhythm.

My friend does not kill.
A spiritual choice, she says:
She cannot take a life
To sustain her own.

And so she eats salads
Without a thought
About the moral consequences
Of her actions.

Join the club, she tells me.
You must be conscious,
Have two eyes and a heart
And look a little like me.

My love is boundless,
But only if you remind me of me.
That’s fair, she says;
Otherwise how would we survive?

You may have heard this before.
I love you, but
You must look a little like me:
Blue eyes, blonde hair
Five foot five with skin like mine--
Otherwise how would we survive?

You must come with us on
Sundays, say the same words
And profess your sins to
The same grand vision--

Must live on this side
Of the line, and not the other
And chant the same glorious words
To the same glorious piece of cloth.

Otherwise how would we survive?
If not in factions, then not at all.
We’d be dead, like the millions
Bleeding their love out on the battlefield.

Are plants not alive?
The sun, stars, mud, sky,
Air--are they not to be loved
In their own right?

Love your life, they tell me.
Yours and yours alone.
Guard your selfish intentions
In the heart that you alone
Have the privilege to have.