GAMMA12-HOW THEY FOUND A HEART

“Love, you whisper. Love, are you there?”

“Your father always told you that Love was the reason you were in the world. That he took the heart out of his chest and handed it to your mother and she did the same. Then one day, they pushed the two hearts together like clay and sculpted a baby and that baby was you.

But then your mother was gone and your world ended. Now you are bigger, and you have questions. There’s a girl whose smile makes you want to cry. You made her laugh, once, and the freckles on her cheeks scrunched up in a happy expression, and it felt like the sky was falling around you.

You want nothing more than to live in the space where her eyelashes meet her cheek. Her knuckles brush against yours and she laughs quietly, tucking hair like a sunset behind her ear. You laugh too, although nothing is funny. Your stomach flips, like it always does, but this time, it doesn’t stop. You can feel the world tilting at an angle as you struggle to breathe.

You know, then, that you are choking, so you excuse yourself. It would be embarrassing to die in front of her. There is something caught in your throat. It feels like something angry crawling up from your insides, digging its claws into the soft pink of your esophagus. It reaches towards your uvula, slow and teasing. You gag, the sound so loud and disgusting that you feel surprised that it came from you.

You cough, desperate for the feeling to fade. It tickles at the back of your mouth now, so you reach with shaking fingers past your teeth and into your throat. Your fingers brush against something soft, so you grasp it between your index and thumb, pulling. It catches along your soft palate and your mouth fills with the taste of pennies.

Once it’s finally out, you look at it, ignoring the spit and blood that dribbles past your chin.

Flowers. You are holding flowers.

This becomes a daily occurance. You’ve been coughing up gardenias and lilacs and yarrow and you do not know what to do. It hurts every time, and at some points you can feel the creeping vines tear at your airways, and you wonder how long before they begin to bloom in your lungs, leaving you as nothing more than a suffocated garden bed.

You ask your father if this is Love. He just looks at you and bellows sadly, his filth-matted hands digging into the wet earth. You want to tell him about the girl, but he’s crying now, big shaking sobs that move his shoulders up and down. You sit beside him as he continues to paw at the ground, you watch as he digs and digs and cries and cries, like he’s searching for something he’s lost. He does this everyday and it hurts to watch.

You know that he’s broken, but you’ve gone and upset him with your questions, like the careless evil child that you are. What’s worse, you can’t stop thinking about her. Even as your father eats fistfuls of earth and your breathing constricts into more of a wheeze, all you can think about is what her smiles would taste like.

After your father and his tears have fallen asleep, you go inside. The mirror above the bathroom sink is small, but you can see yourself well enough. You pull off your clothes, gazing at your nakedness. Love, you whisper. Love, are you there? A flush creeps up your stomach and chest, warm and pink, settling around your neck like a scarf.

Yes, Love says. I am here. The scarf tightens. It is uncomfortable. You pull against the heat, but it clings. I don’t want you to be, you tell Love. Why not? Love asks. Aren’t you grateful? Aren’t you proud? No, you tell it. Red creeps up to your throat and you can feel a familiar discomfort begin in your stomach. You cough, blood on your teeth.

They write poems and sing songs for me. The pompous thing whispers. You can’t breathe. All you can taste is the sweet nectar of the flowers that are growing from your windpipes. They die and kill on my behalf, they leave gifts at my feet. Please leave. Your voice doesn’t work, but you mouth the words to your reflection. Please. Just leave me alone.

No. It’s laughing at you. You can feel it in the way heat swirls in your stomach. Why? You slam your palms against cold porcelain. Why? I don’t need you here. I don’t want you here. Just let me go. Love says nothing, but there’s a smug feeling that settles in your cheeks as you blush. You’re furious at this parasite of feeling, this self-righteous muse of self-destruction. You want it dead, want to destroy it for what it’s done. You need to kill it, kill it now before it kills you, but you don’t know how.

You want to stop wanting her, want to breathe again. The pain of the flowers thrums deep, and you double over with another coughing fit. Your vision goes hazy and all you can hear is the rushing of your blood and the thumping of your heart. You look down at the bouquet that you vomited into the sink, and listen to the desperate thump thump thump in your ears. The source, you realize. You must end it from the source.

You unlock that thing inside your chest and ease out your beating heart. You set it beside the sink, considering it. It is bleeding onto the countertop, little white and purple flowers blooming in its ventricles. You hate it, but you cannot allow yourself to become hollow. You march, naked and clutching your heart, into the wilderness in which you were raised.

You tear at the grass, shake the trees, and scavenge. It is a feral search, and you do it with your teeth bared at a weak world. You let filth cake underneath your nails. The woods are quiet, because all within know that you are wilder and more vicious than any other predator they’ve ever seen. Even as your frail body begins to wilt, as you can’t help but collapse in a heap of coughing flowers, nothing dares come close to you. You wonder if they can smell your determination.

Once you’re satisfied with your collection, you braid a structure of mud and bark and clumps of hair and wriggling creatures and the bones of small animals until you’ve made something about the size of a fist, hideously ugly and pulsing with hate.

The thing goes into your chest, and then you’re purging; flowers and Love and tears and smiles and freckles and sunset hair - they all leave your body until you’re empty. When you know that they are gone, you shudder, kneeling in the dirt next to your abandoned heart. You think of her and you feel nothing. You can finally breathe. You dig with your hands, making a hole that is small, but deep. You force your heart into this space and you cover it with dirt, packing it until it looks as though it was another patch of undisturbed earth.

You cough once, and a large black feather sits on your tongue.”