I need to go back. I want to go back.

I'm working on the line at a beef plant, 
dayshift, eight to four. My crew works at 
the station right after the cow's hide has 
been peeled off. The whole hide flies off the 
carcass in a second flat. It's a sharp ripping 
noise and the hide has come off right over the 
head, face and all. The cow bobs on the hooks 
and slowly winds its way into our station. We 
step in, tag the head and shoulder with 
inspection stickers, cut the jugular, and carve 
the neck away until the head is being held on by 
only the windpipe and esophagus. One of us cuts 
away the membrane that connects the esophagus to 
the windpipe, while the other secures the freed
esophagus with an elastic band. We can go through 
a hundred head of cattle in an hour. All in a 
downpour of hot blood.

My co-workers are twenty five year old men with
little boys at home and plans to teach them to skate
when the outdoor rinks get flooded. Or,
fortysomething women with the friendliest, most
sympathetic faces and pieces of conversation to make
you feel like there really is good in the world and
everything is going work out fine. Or, imported
Central Americans with faces paralyzed into masks,
except for their doubletime mouths with flashing pink
gums, arguing in Spanish in the breakroom. Or,
Africans with salt and pepper beards, sad faces, beer
bellies, and beautiful families that they want to
tell everyone about.

It never stops feeling unbearably grim and surreal,
looking down that non-stop line of carcasses waiting
to be broken down into component pieces by tough men
and women from all over the world with yellow rubber
aprons and chain mail gloves.

I need to go back.

I understand why I wanted to leave, why I wanted to
cut myself from classrooms and halls and paste in
downtown hustle/bustle. It was a terrible, beautiful
freedom that I'd never had before. A classroom-- I
didn't need that when I could sleep until the day was
warm and bright and then ride my bike downtown, watch
the lunch break secretaries ferrying Styrofoam
containers from street vendors to benches in the
park, toss coins to hungover and howling buskers with
blew-out guitars, wave away the eye contact of dope
dealers reclining in the shadows of tall trees with
their Ziploc bags and Frisbee-toting pitbulls, nod to
squeegee kids at the intersection with anarchy
patches on army surplus jackets, just soak up the
whole world. I needed a season of summer citygazing
and pigeon feeding, coming home late at night after
risking my life for my life. I needed that absolute
irresponsiblity for a while.

But that's done now. I need to come back. I need to
sit through lectures and chat with red-cheeked
classmates while chattering students swarm around us,
sweep us along with them. I need to pour myself into
papers, cramp my hands up and feel proud and
exhilarated by my work. I want to filter the outside
world through a safe lense and fall back into
comfortable essays with precise sentences. I need to
go back to that as much as I needed to leave it.