There was something inside of her that had been there for a very long time, maybe the whole time, and now that she knew it was there, she wished she had never cut herself open to see it. She would have been happy with it eroding her from within for the rest of her life until it killed her, blissful and ignorant and naive. She stood in front of the shattered mirror with the scalpel bloodied and her hands trembling, unable to look this thing in the face and seeing still that there was something beautiful about it, and she choked back a sob knowing she would have to tear it out of her.

As she pulled back each part of skin and sinewy muscle, her tendons held on desperately to this parasite that had made a home out of them. Each pass of the blade over the connective tissue was agony. The cells grew back immediately after each slice, like a scab being picked at over and over by a small child. Eventually, she set the scalpel on the counter and went in with her bare hands. The thing tore free much more easily, but she realized with horror that her hands nearly refused the movement. She had to make a conscious effort to keep pulling, tugging at the fibers of this thing that latched onto her skin like a tumor. When she finally pulled it out, the empty space in her chest was cold and numb. She dropped the thing in the sink and picked up the needle and thread. She didn’t feel much of anything as she sewed herself up, only a desire to be whole again. The stitches ended up lopsided and ugly. She didn’t even want to think about what her husband would say.

She took it out to the backyard afterwards, wrapped it in newspaper and took the rusted shovel out of the shed. She put on yellow kitchen gloves so she wouldn’t feel it, wouldn’t let it contaminate her again, but even through the latex and even through the paper it was warm and alive and it pushed to be let back in. She let out a hard breath when she dropped it in the grass to pick up the shovel and she didn’t know if it was in pain or relief.

The handle was hot from the touch of the sun, so she gripped it harder, hoping it would leave a mark, praying that the heat would spread to the rest of her shivering body. She tore up the soft green grass that her husband dreamed of their children playing on one day. She struck the dirt with the head of her shovel like it was something to kill. Sweat dripped down her neck, her back, her fingers, making her grip slide. Still she was cold. She was waiting for something to burn her, make her go up in flames. The sun. The shame. God, maybe. Nothing came, and still she was cold. She dug for a long time, longer than she needed to, and it still didn’t feel like a proper punishment, so she stopped. She took a step back and looked at the pit in the dirt and felt the pit in her chest. She wanted it to just be done.

When she picked up the parasite, it was no longer warm, but the weight and reality of it nearly burned her. She dropped it heavily into the hole and stared at it for a moment. It would be wrong, of course, to mourn it or give words to it in any way, but there was something about the whole ordeal that reminded her of a funeral. Maybe somewhere, a eulogy was being spoken for her.

Each scoop of dirt that she threw onto the carcass made her breath catch more and more until she was struggling for air. When it was all done and covered, she looked down at the raw earth and felt like she had lost something, but she couldn’t explain what because this thing was not supposed to be part of her in the first place. Somewhere in the back of her mind she made a connection to her wedding day.

The daisies at the edge of the yard pulled at her gaze. They were soft. Delicate. Innocent. She wondered how they would look pulled out of the ground, brown and shriveling and ugly on the freshly turned soil at her feet. A marker, a gravestone of sorts. She could not do that though because the neighbors would see the grave over the fence and they would ask her what had happened. They would ask her what she buried and where it came from and it would be shameful to call herself the source. She let the flowers live and hoped the grass would grow back over and she would never have to give a single thought to the whole ordeal ever again. She gingerly touched the stitches on her chest and turned to the house. She had to scrub the bathroom bare before her husband came home.