This essay is part of Gufim: Our Jewish Bodies, a 2024 series by New Voices writers that explores embodiment, physicality, and our relationships to our bodies through a Jewish lens. Gufim focuses on disability & chronic illness, eating disorders and body liberation, queer/trans experiences, race/racism, and more. Our writers explore these issues through writing, art, and Torah.
Shechita: Butchered Butch and His Shochet
My shochet approaches
Soon butchered butch
Her skillfully selected chalif
Sharpened with such dedication
That in the instance
Her thumb was slit
She would feel no pain
Blade free of blemish
Examine me, beloved Shochet
Trail loving palms across my skin
I swear to your knife edge
This soon-to-be-meat
Is without imperfection
Suffering neither injury
Nor illness
Utter the prayer of your ancestors
Sanctify my departure
From this realm
Each syllable recited with a
Comforting steadiness
Sealing my fate as a beast for slaughter
My shochet caresses
Jaw with firm grasp
Exposing flesh to
Impending brisk incision
Solace found in
Her measured breathing
Rhythmic exhale
We both know will
Outlive my own
You do not long for my
Final moments to be illuminated
By the excruciation of death
For my body altering to that of
A treyf being’s
Would void this soft tissue
Of being torn and ground
By kashrut-honoring
Lipstick stained teeth
And in an unflinching sweep
Slice clean through my esophagus
Which guides chewed cud
Towards awaiting stomach
Expose the inner walls of
These tracheal cartilage rings
Sever threads who encourage
Lifeforce through me
My carotid and jugular
Dearest Shochet, gaze upon
The remaining vessel
Shroud him in your beauty
Allow my soul to linger
Within the iron-tasting air hanging between us
Before you drain the blood
From my throat
Loneliness Builds a Home In Disability
Chest-crushing loneliness
This subtle suffocation
Is not a recent addition to my reality
Disability has pinned me here in the past
My sweet cicada wings nearly crackle with the pierce
Dusty, and threatening a satisfying crunch
Over two decades caked with bouts of isolation
This is no new iron tinged taste
To my drying lips
But there is something sicker, more devastating this time around
For it is not my brain locked in my mind
But my whole consciousness sealed away inside the rotting casing
Of my vessel
There is a comfort in dark, drawn curtains
When the goal is to protect loved ones from my destructive grasp
Now, there is no logical reasoning for this bleak solitude
I cannot persuade myself that I am doing right by the world, tucked away in my enclosure
My appendages are immobilized not by
My own free will
But by deteriorating joints
Who wither and whine when I stretch towards the thin hints of light
Which creep from the windowpane
