Bicep

I dug a hole in the soil with my hands, and it stuck darkly under my nails. The earth in my fruit cage was wet and warm, red from the juice of crushed raspberries and fertile with the bodies of little dead things. I buried you there to grow tall and strong. When you were sturdier than me and your head came up higher than the plum tree by your patch, you tore your feet from your roots and came into my kitchen. Your muddy soles got dirt all over my clean floors. I didn’t mind, that first time.

It was good for a bit. You didn’t smell like soap and, when you held me, your beard scratched at my chin when we kissed. All my friends loved you and congratulated me on finding such a strong and handsome husband.

But you forgot my birthday. You never took the garbage out when I had asked you a thousand times and it brought the smell of rot into our home. When you walked through the door, slick with your work sweat, and I didn’t have dinner ready, well, you could be quite mean.

So, I fixed you a drink. Garnished with homegrown orange peel and sleeping nightshade. While you were asleep, I cut off the hand you hit me with. I chopped it into a salad. We ate it for lunch the next day. You were delicious, and I felt better after that. When you were rude to my mother, I cut out your tongue and baked it into a pie. When you started going for those long drives without me, I severed your legs and froze most of them for later. I spread your liver on crackers and gave it to my friends, who were less impressed with you now that you weren’t much more than a torso.

I took you to bed one last time. I balanced you on a tray, with a knife and fork and the TV on, and I chewed through the last of you. Except for the bit which I needed to plant. Last time, I had grown you from tough muscle, so you’d come out all wrong. The next time, I knew, would be different.

Liver

My mother was surprised to hear my handsome husband wasn’t around anymore, but she understood when she saw your wide, wet eyes and the way you trotted after me. When I touched you, I felt your pulse dance from fingertip to fingertip. I tingled and tensed in return, at the power I held over you. You always took out the garbage without being asked.

You agreed that my friend Zara was trying to undermine me so she could feel better about herself. We stopped inviting her to parties. When I said I missed her, you frowned. I stopped telling you that. I started lying to you about the time I spent with her.

She and I scurried around hotel bars like drunk mice. It worked for a while. But the lying, the late nights and the smell of liquor helped you think I had a problem. I woke one morning to find you’d taken every bottle out of the house.

I laughed a lot. But I was a little scared you’d been able to do that in the night without my hearing. The next time you went to sleep, I chewed off a bit of your foot so you’d limp and be a little louder. Just to be safe.

Things really were fine for a while after that. Then I complained about my boss one too many times, and you started to talk to me about quitting my job. You made enough money for both of us, you said. And, some days, I really wanted to quit my job, I did. But, other days, I wanted to be there just to get away from you.

You made the decision for me. You called Zara, too. You had my mother fooled. And I knew you were only trying to take care of me, to keep all the bad things out, but either your shadow was growing larger or the walls were coming closer, and there wasn’t enough oxygen left to breathe.

I didn’t have a choice. Even though you loved me, I asked you to lie down on the table. I got out my carving knife and fork. You looked up lovingly into my eyes as I pared flesh from bone. Chunks of you came off, some tender, some all gristle. I slid them into the oven. The kitchen was in rapture with the smells of burning hair and roasting meat. I’m ashamed to admit, I gorged myself that night. After you were finished, I found room for ice cream. That’s what single girls do though, no?

And that was when I realised the problem. You were a man, and men could never work.

Rib

You slipped between the sheets in the early hours. The sound of your skin against satin was a rustle and a vibration. I shook in fear of your beauty when I put my face to your breast. But you smiled like you couldn’t be more pleased and slipped your head between my legs like you had found nirvana there.

You came to drinks with my work colleagues one crisp Thursday evening and charmed everyone. You listened to me talk about the men who had hurt me and drew circles with your thumb across the palm of my hand. You saw under my smiles and my skin, to the pain in my gut. We curled up under one blanket on rainy nights, hands intertwined, and fell asleep on the sofa watching telly with three glasses of wine finished between us.

Yours was a gentle, romantic love and I hoped it would last forever. But you couldn’t help yourself. You needed to know where you stood, too scared of falling to stay kind. You whispered things to my friends beyond my hearing. The house stayed big but I began to shrink under the weight of your words, whispers, impressions. Then I caught you looking at her like you could see under her skin, under her dress.

I tore the tongue from your mouth with my teeth the next time we made love. The men tasted like savoury things, vegetables and dirt. You tasted like fruit, sweet and juicy. When I’d finished, you were a pink stain on the sheets and the last part of you I needed.

I swore off partners after that. It was a foolish thing to do. You can’t grow an equal out of the ground.

Ovary

You ran through the house with muddy feet and threw yourself into the bed beside me. You left rust brown stains everywhere and bounced me awake shrieking, “Mummy, mummy!” You smelled like a chemical pina colada after I washed your hair with ‘no tears’ shampoo. You didn’t know it was my birthday until I told you. You drew me a card where I was a big dog and you were a puppy sitting on my back.

My friends got used to parties winding up early because I had no intention of keeping you awake late with the chatter of our drinking. And there was less of that, too. Your grandmother spoiled you silly. You ran away from home to her once, and I couldn’t even be angry with you because I was just so glad you were safe and sound when I found you there.

You made up the most creative stories and you said such funny things. You had your face painted like a butterfly at the fair and refused to let me wash it off for two days. Your love was my bread and your appetite for my love was unending. Our love was so big it ate my hunger up.

When you got too old for face painting and ‘no tears’, I took you into the garden and showed you how to grow green things. You were a natural and soon you knew all the secrets of my fruit cage.

When you were older still, you stopped eating the things we grew in our garden, and I’m afraid I took it rather badly. You’d stopped eating everything by then, and I wasn’t sure what to do or say. You weren’t all that thin. I didn’t see all that much harm in it. Every girl goes through that phase, doesn’t she? And you did eat a lot sometimes. All at once. Which was a relief.

The morning after one of those times, you refused to leave the stretch of bed to bathroom that you’d claimed as your territory. Even though we had friends staying and you were almost an adult. You wouldn’t shower, move or let me turn your bedroom lights on. Our friends avoided mentioning it when you’d still failed to emerge by four o’ clock.

I got you to the table and asked you what was wrong. You looked at your hands, twisting your fingers into knots. Eventually, you told me. I couldn’t bear how stupid it was. For this, you’d made our friends cringe and left them lonely and mystified? I told you to get your head on straight, to think about how you made other people feel.

You cried and got angry. I knew it hadn’t gone well, but I’d expected we’d forget about this little tiff, like so many others. It was not to be.

Two nights after our friends left, I awoke to a strange pressure, your knees on either side of my chest as you worked a bread knife across the place where my shoulder met my torso. Your dark coils, so like my own, brushed my face as you performed the grisly deed. Your lips and chin were red and wet. There was something pink caught beneath your teeth. I thought about trying to stand up, or push you off, or hold you one last time, but I realised, when I tried to move them, that my legs and arms were already gone. Separated smartly, I suspected, with the meat cleaver on the chest of drawers.

Next to the cleaver sat a green plastic plate, the kind we used for picnics and weighing slices of butter. I thought at first that the yellowish thing on the plate was butter. But it wasn’t. It was my ear, carefully cut away and placed to one side.

You’d already started on my jaw and my tongue. It was difficult to speak. Still, I think you understood when I told you to remember, you had to dig the hole with your hands, just like I’d taught you.