pickled heart
05 Jul 2020VI. Pickled Heart
On the last day of summer, we went into the garden and picked the last berries. Little red and black bulbs full of concentrated sunlight. We brought our full baskets into the kitchen.
I remember your sun kissed skin, the seasmell in your hair.
I’m glad I took those things, then. Took them and pressed them between pieces of newspaper and two books like precious petals.
In the kitchen, we watched the sugary liquid boil and then we sealed summer into a jar.
Later, in the evening, we sat on the verandah, inhaling the purple August air of cherries and ripe apples and the newly rainsoaked earth, preparing for a long winter sleep.
Did you touch me that night? I don’t know.
The grey light was heavy, the memories heavier, the fear unbearable.
At an unnoted time past midnight, I crept past your sleeping form into the kitchen and took your carving knife. In the yellow light of the lone kitchen nife, it gleamed sharp and promising.
I cut out my heart and placed it on the dicing board.
I watched it beat – once, twice – before it fell silent. The blood seeped into the wood – it would be impossible to get out later.
I placed it inside one of the jars that we had bought for the berries and I sealed it.
When I came back upstairs, the moonlight had shifted and your form was nothing but a gnarly shadow praying on the hope of lonely hearts.
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