Waiting To Be Eaten Poem by Gillian Commerford

I remember going with my mother
to the butcher
in the days when the naked carcasses
hung on hooks in the front of the shop
for all the customers to see
not hidden like a secret nobody must know.
The blood from the meat
slowly dripping onto the wood shavings below
filling my nostrils with a sickly-sweet scent
that made me sneeze
that made me feel sick
but also excited me somehow.
And how like headless, limbless
torsos the carcasses looked
so that I could imagine myself
hanging there
headless, limbless
waiting to be eaten.