I peeled off your skin so I could dissect you. I wanted to measure every flutter, set right the slightest irregular palpitation. When I was small, I saw open heart surgery on T.V. The heart I’d known from Valentine’s Day—that red paper cut out—wasn’t displayed on the hospital table. This one was bloody, like road kill. The first time I felt a lover’s heartbeat, I thought of that surgery, how strangers poked and prodded the patient’s heart with metal tools. I pulled your heart out of its bone cage and held it in my hands.
– Brittany Michelson
Brittany Michelson’s work is published in Speech Bubble Magazine, Glossolalia Fiction, Flashquake, Every Day Fiction, Espresso Stories, 50 Word Stories, and other online journals. Print work is forthcoming in PMS Journal and an anthology by Bona Fide Books. She lives in Los Angeles.
