It arrived this afternoon swaddled in plastic wrap and packed in ice, already beheaded
and de-furred, lustrous and pale. Both creatures ready, the counter sanitized and clear,
Chef takes animal apart, parting limbs from torso with practiced hands
and a paring knife, shearing burgundy muscle loose from bone, his wrist loosening
tissue with swift flicks. His frame mounts a shadow over the once-a-rabbit, the getting
comes easy, his synapses discharging from the memory grove: brain to bicep
to wrist to knife’s edge. He stills, holds the heart a beat. This heart, a rough
nugget of muscle, the size of a walnut. How much panting
this knot has wrought, the unseen leaps it has propelled. He pinches. A small bubble of blood
hiccups out, drips down his thumb. Stroke after stroke, history
is flayed into filament. The life spent in some unseen wood or brush—now just Bordeaux
chunks on the cutting board. A man with large hands, a parcel of meat, parceled out
into useable and refuse. Later, added fat and aromatics, the food mill’s burr
and oven’s heat. You will never taste the final clench, those last breaths
of bad luck. All the usual business, this is the way, the way it goes.
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