culling the runts:

the process by which one eliminates, when breeding snails in captivity,
genetically weak offspring from a clutch of snails.
the runts need to be culled, otherwise they suffer,
in pain, their whole lives. this isn’t a metaphor:
the runts, doomed, grow slower than the organs inside of themselves.
that’s what a runt is: organs growing faster than a malformed shell
every two weeks for the first six weeks of their lives,
the snails from the clutch of eggs must be culled.
the best way to do it, I have learned, is to crush them.
freezing them makes their death slow and painful.
crushing them takes one tenth of a second.
is the runt grateful? does it think thank god
when the bottom of the mason jar looms in the sky
lowering to swiftly and efficiently crush its body?
do runts go to snail heaven? is the snail god a merciful one?
gastropods don’t have brains, but they have nervous systems.
this means they can feel pain. this means they have the feeling
that made us make up a god in the first place.
over two million results come up when i search “can snails feel pain?”
i learn that snails have the biochemical capacity for love,
but no evolutionary reason to feel it.
i’ve never loved a snail, but i think i could be
the merciful mason jar god of the runts,
crushing a shell never made to be lived in.