tiny tale (pt. i)

a speculative non-fiction about the pigs that most moved my cold cold heart from the university archives

there were seven of us. the third died at six weeks. the sixth died of heat at a year old. the first and fourth were lived three and a half years in peace.

so there were three of us subject to experimentation — the second, fifth, and seventh. the second they named ben, the fifth kate, and i’m the seventh, the runt of the litter. so they called me tiny, even after i had grown past 200 pounds.

ben was the quietest and calmest of us. kate was the most emotional. i was somewhere in the middle.

my earliest and most treasured memories occurred that first fall of our birth, soon after we stopped drinking our mother’s milk. the trees were turning colors and the soil smelled of delicious decay.