Self Portrait at Eleven with Complicity

MARCI CALABRETTA CANCIO-BELLO

I came home to her hanging from the corner of our garage roof. Stipples of blood congealed on the driveway’s sloping tarmac. Ankles bound, white belly slit open, the body’s rivers undone. I could have touched her narrow forehead, considered it but hesitated, and her clouded eye followed me onto the porch. After that, I wouldn’t leave the house until he brought her down. He layered cardboard on a long plastic table in the basement, sharpened his knives. I opened the door and watched him wrestle the skin from her ribs. Where were the branches, I asked, shouldn’t there be white bones branching from her skull? You shouldn’t be here, he said, and the room smelled of sinews. This was the year the herds spilled into the neighborhoods, too many fawns, too much frost, too many snails in the garden. I don’t know how he knew where to set the knife, to parse and quarter and preserve. He showed me her tawny coat, let me pass a finger through the bullet hole, the hind’s heart pierced by a tiny, thick needle threaded with fire and gunshot. Didn’t it hurt, I asked, pulling my hand back from her coarse hair. We give of ourselves as we must, he said, and I saw how he had laid an old shirt over the long face, the eyes, saw the bright emptiness of our refrigerator week after week, the fog of his breath and the weight of the blade in his hands.