I offered her my heart, ripe and tender on a silver platter. But the platter was tarnished. And there was a small bruise in the center of the heart.
“I’m sorry,” she said in her honeyed voice. “While I appreciate the effort it must have taken to tear your heart out, it’s not quite right for me.”
I felt my soul ripping away from my body, trying to escape the burning vessel of shame. As I turned to go, I worried I wouldn’t make it to the door before being reduced to a disgraced pile of ashes.
“Please remember,” I heard her say. “Every appetite is different. There must be someone who hungers for what you have. Perhaps someone starving like you.”
I didn’t turn to look at her, but I knew her eyes were sparkling, cold and blue as sapphires. I imagined her tongue sliding across the velvet of her lips as she considered the other, more delicious offerings that would be laid at her perfect feet.
When I got outside, I sat down on the steps of her palace and looked at the heart I held in my hands. Another man walked through the doors, and as he sulked down the steps, he shook his head and muttered, “Some hungers will never be satisfied.”
I looked again at my heart, at the dark spot in the center. I put it to my lips, then took a bite.
Even pain has a sweetness to it.
***
Lisa Lerma Weber’s work has appeared in Barren Magazine, Ghost City Review, Mineral Lit Mag, Mookychick, The Wild Literary Magazine, and others. Follow her on Twitter @LisaLermaWeber
Rejection Letters 