Amanda Leahy
When we find the lambs they are fully intact, save for the tiny holes bored neatly into the flesh above where their liver and kidneys once were. From the other side, they look as if they are just slightly deflated, sleeping. We collect the bodies, one at a time. We deliver them to the compost pile.
We drive through again in your truck. There are no obvious holes in the fencing. Goldenrod reaches as high as the truck’s open windows. It is late September, the last warm day of the year.
We don’t speak. But when you slow, I know you have found them. Look for where the grass is broken, you tell me. Look. Do you see?
I like to imagine that for you and for them, it always happens this way. The slinking, the invisibility. The slow release of language. The moment of communion.
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Amanda Leahy is a native of Lowell, Massachusetts. She is currently pursuing an MFA at Vermont College of Fine Arts and lives in Montpelier,Vermont.
