Learning to Eat my Mother, where my Mother is the Teacher

Where did I start? Yes, with the heart, enlarged, its chambers stretched through caring. In this body feeling is what the body is. The alert heart, an alarm rings out in all hours of the night, flashing red and white. Oh is it in defiance or defeat, I don’t know, I eat it anyway, raw, still warm. The size of my fist, I love it. Strange, a vegetarian resorting to cannibalism. She is disgusted with me. Wouldn’t you begin with the outside? Sweating, I pry open the rib cage. I do not want to eat her ribs, but I do. Then strip her fingers of meat. I hold them tenderly in my mouth, watch her blue eyes well-up out of love, I assume. I move from heart, to ribs, fingers, to spongy lungs: buoyant, porous, melt-in-the-mouth.

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