Qualia

I watch them eat. I don’t care make a sound as I sit in the back, for I am too young, too small. Maybe they’ll offer me a bite, a tiny sliver of meat to keep a young boy from starving. That’s wishful thinking. If they can suck the blood juice from the toes of an infant, they surely aren’t thinking of me. I fiddle with my chains some as my mind wanders to what life would be like without them. The older men talk about life before it, how women used to be, before the gender wars became real and I was born to love my life as a slave. I heard the sun can “kiss skin” as it blazed the sky. When I free my ankles from these shackles, I will figure out something can burn while it kisses you…

—Firefly