Allegory with Question by Aleka Kroitzsh

I wanted to be like the owl: 
raging layers so he could puff himself up to twice his naked body’s size, 
head screwing around 180 degrees, 
black winter eyes. 
He perched on the thickest branch of the ponderosa pine.

I wasn’t equipped with wings like him.
I am a skin wearing, two-legged, 
head that only screws around 90 degrees,
ground-bound creature.

I brought him a rat. 
I couldn’t bear to kill it, 
I left that to him. As he tore the rat’s squiggly intestines 
from its small furry body, 
I pulled out the burrito I had packed in my bag and sat near him. 
I plunged my teeth into its wheat-skin, 
sucking pink coleslaw into my mouth.

I gathered up the courage to ask the Owl a question—
a question that had been eating away at me.
“Teach me how to care less.
Teach me to kill.
And to fly away the way you do.” 

The owl’s marble-black beady eyes locked with my wide ones.
He opened his beak and squawked loudly,
Spreading his black wings and fanning me with them. 
“Teach me,” I pleaded,
“Things are so heavy here on the ground.”
The owl had reached the rat’s heart

And ate the pea-sized thing in a single beak-bite.
He waved his wings and soared, 
Leaving me with the rat, gutted.
My heart beat fast and the rat’s didn’t at all:
The heart I had sold to the owl
In return for flying lessons.

I stared at it.
I realized that everything the owl had told me was true:

The rat was a ground thing
I couldn’t kill it,
I couldn’t have eaten its organs,
Especially its heart,
And flown away, leaving hallow soft skin in my wake.

I was a ground thing
Soft skin and edible heart
And I can’t digest life this way.