Once upon a time,

a dead lamb woke up
in a parking lot, inside
a minivan.  Struggling
against the shrinkwrap
and the styrofoam tray,
she looked up
at the dome light
and thought:

where’s my mother?
and where are my limbs?

Now, it’s old news
that an orphan
will fixate on a dim glow
somewhere above
and demand to know
where its missing parts are,

but what happens next —
the escape, the horror of the shoppers
as the lump of meat bounces bleating
from the car and charges haphazardly
across the asphalt toward the meager grass
on the islands between the rows of spaces —

that’s something else.
We feel hope
under the shiver
running up our backs:
a small chance of salvation

We the
dismembered,
born to be killed,
then packaged and consumed, might have
a chance at redemption;

even if the life
we regain will be short, unnervingly strange,
and red-lined with incoherent noise and pain,
at least it will be
ours and ours alone.

The look
of rewired surprise
on the faces of those who see us rise
will be enough to require the phrase

"happily ever after"

to be returned
to the language
as something more
than just the end
of a story.