A meal of meat

I scrupulously wipe the final gobbet of flesh from the plate, lifting it to my mouth with an index finger, rolling it slowly across my palate, savouring the last delicious morsel before consigning it to the enzymes and acids of my gullet.

At what point does it become part of me? This miracle of biological process. This relay baton of life. Passed first from the sun to the green leaf of a plant. Packed into a grain in the forlorn hope of reproduction. Absorbed into the body of a battery hen where it is broken down and rearranged into new protein, different DNA. Now feeding my gut flora even as it releases nutrients through my digestive membranes and into my blood. Soon that sunshine will be captured by my own cells. My muscle, my fat, my neurons. Is its energy already flowing from my fingertips into these words? Has some…