THE HUNTSMAN
Lora Gray
Sometimes
it's the lungs and liver,
carved carefully
from his body,
served wet and raw
on silver platters
or boiled deep into stews
where the human flavor
can hide beneath onions
and ribbons
of pale duck fat.
But these days, he says,
it's almost always the heart and,
because a boar's heart
will “never do,”
he steers the knife into
your
hand.
When he lifts his shirt,
you see the purple scars,
the dimpled sag of his sternum,
where his ribs have resigned
to breaking.
You know you are not the first
to press this blade into him,
but you don't expect it to sink
like a spade through moss.
Muscles sigh,
cartilage crackles,
and he splits
open
like rotting wood.
His heart isn't tethered
to the dark and spongy
cavity of his torso.
When he leans forward,
it rocks
in its pulpy cradle
until it
tumbles
out
and lands at your feet.
It isn't beating.
It's breathing
like children sleep,
with stillness sewn between
inhale exhale inhale exhale
and you wonder what
his heart will dream of when he
finally closes it in that horrid
little box.
Of blood?
Or the clean
swing of an ax?
Should you thank him for not killing you?
He has grown this heart for you,
after all,
even though you aren't the first.
You are the fifth.
The tenth.
The hundredth.
He does not look at you
as he stitches
himself closed,
thick needle puckering
seams into flesh
like a smile
or a scream.
When you were fifteen
you met a boy with an orchard of teeth
sprouting from roof of his mouth.
When you kissed him,
there were infinite molars
beneath your tongue,
entrenched and
terrifying and
useless.
You imagine this man's
ribs like fruit trees,
heart after
heart after
heart
dropping into the
soil of his body,
overripe
and tasteless
as winter apples
and you wonder:
if you had not
harvested
this one,
would it have
taken root?
LORA GRAY’s fiction and poetry can be found in Strange Horizons, Shimmer and Flash Fiction Online among other places. They currently live in Northeast Ohio with a handsome husband and a freakishly smart cat named Cecil. You can find Lora online at www.loragray.weebly.com.