cellini's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Incorruptible Heart I made camp in daylight, hours before picking Helenah up. I raised the tent, staked down the rain fly, and inflated the air mattress. The camp chairs were placed around the fire ring just so. I gathered wood and stacked it ready. We sat by the fire and drank white wine from a shared enameled camp mug. I thought of telling her a story but I didn't. And then the next morning I thought again of telling her the story while we lay in each other's arms, soaked with sweat and gazing into each others eyes in the gray morning light. Early one evening, just before dark, I shot a deer in the meadow near my house at the time. The deer fell and I butchered it where it lay a few yards from a barbed wire fence. The next day I walked by the same spot and most of the animal's remains had been scavenged by beasts during the night but the heart remained. A few days later I walked past again and there it was. Untouched, unchanged. Even in that unseasonably warm, fly-buzzing weather of that late November the heart lay immaculate. As bright and bloody and solid as the moment the deer had died. Day after day I walked past the spot. The naked gray ribcage dried out and ragged bits of fibrous meat hung off of the bones in a close-cropped fringe. Every other edible part of the carcass disappeared. Yet still the heart persisted, pink and hard and smooth. One day it was gone entirely without a stain or a fragment remaining. There was nothing remarkable about the incorruptible heart. It did not glow, float in the air, or sparkle. It was a very ordinary looking heart, no different from any other heart that I have ever seen, save that it would not rot or change and no wild creature would touch it. I thought about the heart but I did not tell her about it. I don't know why I didn't tell her. I kissed her on the side of her neck and inhaled her scent without a sound. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SowfjGWbY_k 10:29 p.m. - 2011-10-23 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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