wildscape. literary journal

After the Slaughter
by Rachel Hapanowicz

I was cut out of my mother a month too soon,
the doctor’s scalpel pressed against her stretched
stomach, pushing pushing down to open the skin
where thin green veins of marble patterning gave way,
splitting so blood could pool and the doctor could pull
me out from where I was cooking, growing, early, 
not quite finished, blue in the middle, which is maybe why 
I feel rawer than I should. 
Or maybe this rawness is because of my father
and my father’s family, who come from a long line
of butchers, owners of a Polish meat market
that has been passed from generation to generation,
where the feeling of being flayed has been set in my bones.
Perhaps my infant-self mistook the scalpel that opened my 
mother up for a cleaver, as part of her intestines were
slopped onto a surgical plate,
similar to the sweet sausage links 
hanging from racks in the back of my father’s market,
making way to pull me out like the 
innards of a Thanksgiving turkey, pink and juicy,
slimy and silent, not crying at first which made the 
doctors worry something was wrong, more than wrong,
nurses gathering around my infant body, wondering if maybe I was undone,
if they could return me or send me back to the chef 
for a few more minutes but the chef was now unconscious
more than unconscious, slipping away, a burst blood clot and slippery stitches
unable to mend my mother, the drugs sedating her
(did she still feel pain)
and the only thing they could do now
was rub, tenderize this meat, wait for the screaming to start,
which it did, finally, 
as I was handed to the expectant butcher, 
cradled in calloused hands.
And there was a great sigh of relief 
because I was fresh. 

about the author // Rachel Hapanowicz