The distress of it woke me. She was a chef, Japanese, and she’d laid out on the ground the food she’d prepared for herself to eat on a black cloth. Everything was white and raised up on little plinths. There were shapes and foodstuff I didn’t recognise. Alien. One of these culinary objects was still alive. A bird. Denuded of all plumage, it too was white. It’s breast had been slit. No blood, just a line. And at its throat was a hole. And it was singing. The sound came throught the hole. I was devastated by the cruelty of it. The bird was dying but it kept singing. And she was going to consume it. I woke with the pain of it. Was I too culpable?
