Chapter 11

• She stares long at the clean knives in the kitchen drawer. They are meticulously put away, shined, and smoothed. She dismisses their sharpness, their butchery against butter and sweet pears, the stabbing echoes into tender meat and puts away the knife Grandpa used to cut up an apple. The apple is still there on a plate on the kitchen table from breakfast time. Perfectly round and red on the outside. But the incision Grandpa made is deep. And inside is bruised.
• A rotten apple.
• She picks the rotten apple up and inserts her thumb into the cut, scrapes her fingernail against the flesh, and digs deep and deeper, its juices spilling out and down her wrist. She wonders, if she ever takes the knife and cuts into Grandpa's flesh, will she find spoiled organs? Could she carve out her name from his bones? Untangle herself from his veins and nerves?