Master of Salt & Bones

by Keri Lake

Maybe it’s because I’ve never had a sibling that I can’t seem to understand my aunt’s sympathy toward her. I can’t imagine loving something so much after being fucked over that many times. Just seems like, at some point, it’s not worth the trouble.

“When you cut yourself with a blade, there’s an open wound, and blood and pain, but the pain comes to an end and the wound seals to a scar. So you cut yourself again and again, because you forget how much it hurt the first time. The heart is a different animal. A caged, lonely scavenger that feeds on its own wounds. Its scars never heal, because you can’t mend the very thing it needs to survive. So the wound continues to fester, until what’s left of the organ is eventually consumed by its own self-mutilation.”