Tender Is the Flesh

by Agustina Bazterrica

“I don’t get why a person’s smile is considered attractive. When someone smiles, they’re showing their skeleton.”

“I know that when I die somebody’s going to sell my flesh on the black market, one of my awful distant relatives. That’s why I smoke and drink, so I taste bitter and no one gets any pleasure out of my death.” She takes a quick drag and says, “Today I’m the butcher, tomorrow I might be the cattle.”

There’s something about her he’d like to break.

One can get used to almost anything, except the death of a child.

Because hatred gives one strength to go on; it maintains the fragile structure, it weaves the threads together so that emptiness doesn’t take over everything.

“Everyone says that he fell because he flew too close to the sun,” his father said, “but he flew, do you see what I mean, Son? He was able to fly. It doesn’t matter if you fall, if you were a bird for even just a few seconds.”