The mouths in the silo long for the bobcats’ return. For so long now, too long, our only visitor has been the boars. The boars are lovely. The boars are kind. The boars share their rhizomes and hickory nuts, and when they can they are gracious enough to gift us any bloody pieces they scavenge. Yana has come to enjoy gnawing on the sweet gumminess of mudpuppies; Mehnaz and Grace snatch any scraps with feathers before we can even think to and suck the bones clean every time; Rui has even been getting eager at the thought of one more snake between his teeth, slithering down his esophagus to try and sate the voracious varmint.
We’re all just hollow terrastigma vines, infected with Rafflesia and desperately waiting for the buds to bloom. It’s a wonder, really, that there’s still so many of us. That the need filling our insides hasn’t clawed it’s way up and out of our throats to tear each other apart. Suppose it’s because we know that wouldn’t satisfy the hunger. Hunger alone is a crushing weight but even we would not be able to bear the burden of both hunger and loneliness; since we must reside in the silo, our hunger must stay on a leash.
It wasn’t always like this. There was a time when our bellies were full. Many moons ago, when crying heavens meant wailing winds ripping branches from flora bodies in their tantrums; animals mirroring its plight on each other in repine; river water flooding to baptize the fields of all savage sins. When we used our names. The details of Then are hazy, just like the details of how it got to Now. Now, where only half the animals merely roam the fields and where the only cries we hear are our own. No, we don’t remember much anymore. Just enough for the lack of it all to ache. The lack of meat; of spilling crimson; of ripped muscles, bathed in a sweet metallic glaze.
There’s a rustling in the bushes outside and at once we are all still. Is it? We cannot remember how long, yes, and maybe that is why we still hope for their return. The bobcats, lynx, wildcats. Those gorgeous creatures. Is it?
It isn’t. It’s a deer, a fawn, and something in us howls out of disdain. As if the world is mocking our predicament. How cruel she is to wave a meal we cannot have under our noses just to let it wander off. Lynxes of Then would’ve lunged and sunk in, come back to us dragging the prize and let us all dig in. The lynxes of Then would’ve fed us, offering up the meal to our waiting tongues with their own hungry, blood stained maws. We would’ve split the bones to share marrow, given them the whole liver in thanks. We wouldn’t be so. Hungry.
But there’s no lynxes around. No bobcats have come by recently enough to remember what we last shared. No wildcats dressed in red to admire. Perhaps some rain will bless us soon instead. Maybe looking for the other will bring the one we want. There’s rustling in the bushes.
Bittersweet disappointment. It’s a boar. She wanders in the silo and as she goes nears Rui the sounds of more hooves trail after. Three of her sisters. We bow to see what’s in their mouths, our teeth aching for tough scarlet but expecting simple squash or tubers. Opossums. Meat. It isn’t deer or moose, but it’s meat. Tough, bloody, fresh meat. And it’s good. It’s exactly what we craved, smothering the scorch of need, it’s-
It’s gone. The yawning ache inside of us begins to stretch its sharp limbs again. The boars wander out of the silo; another meal gone under our nose.
We think of the bobcats. We think of feeling full.
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