by Emma Hodson
That day it was just you, me, and the goose. We'd arranged a picnic — I'd bring the wine, and you the bread to share between us. I stopped at the nice wine shop and asked the opinion of the woman working there before selecting an elegant red. When I got to the park, I saw that you'd brought sliced sandwich bread. You placed it between us on the blanket and stretched your arms back to observe the pond, which was placid. A single goose preened nearby, arranging her plumage into neat fluff. The bread was wrapped in plastic, and it made me angry. I had hoped for a crust, something rustic. There was no romance. My face hot, I told you the bread was wrong. "I bet she doesn't think so," you said, referring to the goose. The goose squawked apathetically. You slipped the bread out of its cellophane sheath and threw the goose a bit to eat. You took in the scene with a dumb smile on your face, as if watching the goose consume your spongey bread was like going on a silent meditation retreat, a serene moment alone in nature. This made me even angrier. When you reached across my body to grab for the wine, I had to act fast. My hand swiped the bottom of my bag to feel for the corkscrew — it was a gift from my father. He collected bottle openers and corkscrews and arranged them by the kitchen sink. One was shaped as an octopus and another like a cowboy. His banjo could open your beer. The corkscrew I had with me now was adorned with tiny painted hearts. I thought of your heart then, radiating its steady beat to me through your flannel. I had rested my head on your chest many times and wondered what it might be like to have a heart that beat so calmly, no troubles accelerating it to an unwieldy pace. I wondered if our hearts even looked alike, and I immediately rendered yours in my mind's eye. It looked like the sheep heart that we’d dissected in my high school biology 2 class. It was not as red as Valentine’s cards had implied it might be, but rather a dull bluish pink, like half chewed gum, acrid chunks of fat woven through muscle, sitting in a damp puddle of blood and other viscous fluids. This heart, of course, was not beating, but for my purposes it was easy to conjure its unfaltering thumps. I remembered how our scalpels had sliced into it, blade sliding cleanly into flesh, how it drooled as we picked it apart, like the segments of an orange. I raised the corkscrew slowly in my palm, sweaty, and my heart, unlike yours, beat wild and uneven, an escaped locomotive. I made as if I were going to open the bottle, and then, I tossed it into the lake, like a crumb.
It landed with a splash and startled the goose.
Emma Hodson is a writer living in the Bay Area, where she advances reproductive rights at her 9 to 5. Her work has appeared in X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine and Orange Blossom Review, and is forthcoming in Hobart. You can tweet to her at @emmaQ_hod.