Pets

I have a lizard that I keep in my room.  I hold it close, hugging it, smelling the oil on its scales, smelling its skin.  Its heart thunders because it does not want to be held.  It wants to eat crickets and be free but I keep it in a cage.

It would eat my skin if it were big enough.  It would eat my muscles and my organs too.  It would eat my liver.  But the days when lizards were huge and mammals were small are gone and it is small and I keep it for my entertainment, reaching into the cage whenever I want, my warm searching hand turning over its hiding-rock, spilling water into the sand, unperturbed by its whipping tail, unbroken by its biting teeth and its sandpaper tongue, uncaring for the terror in its eyes.

My people rose up and made cages and steel while its people became birds.  And those birds left this lizard behind, left it in my cruel hands, left it to be tortured at my whim.

I also have fish.

--Steve Kilian

Stephen Hawking Contemplates The Void

Abandoned Halloween Costume Ideas