Buffalo Heart

She knelt beside her uncle in the still-cold light of morning. There were others, a semi-circle of muddy warrior knees that she had known all six years of her life. The large animal that lay in a devastating heap in front of them was emitting steam from its wounds. The girl’s uncle slid a pewter blade between the ribs of the animal and pulled down with practiced effort. She watched the veins in his forearm move under the skin, making room for tendons flexing and muscles tightening. She stared at the worming ripples until the dense smell of blood forced its way into her nose and brought her back around to the scene before her. She pushed her bluntly cut bangs out of her eyes for what seemed the hundredth time already that day.  The soles of her hand-me-down ninja turtle sneakers were staining different colors in the rising layers of blood and looked like thin strips of red-rock in the side of a cut away mountain pass. She adjusted her low position to the earth and felt the suction of mud beneath her shoe. The liver was removed and passed in her opposite direction. She watched as each of her kinsmen first slid their thumbs over the shiny organ before bringing it to their lips to taste. When it was her turn, she took what was left in her small hands and without thinking, brought it to her face and bit. In her mouth, the warm piece sat for a moment before she spit it onto the ground beside her. The men exchanged smiles and laughed in a way that made the girl laugh too. She was not embarrassed. She pushed her bangs back with a clean part of her wrist. Her uncle was already cutting the tethered heart from the body, a separation felt throughout the group. He traded the shared liver for the whole heart, hot and heavy in her cupped hands. She looked at the blue parts, saw how they intersected with the brown-red parts in tributaries and collections of white. She thought of the working veins in her uncle’s arm and the bundle became a relative, a pet, a still-born brother. She bit. The medicine ran over her chin. Her mother’s tears soaked her pink shirt and wet her not-yet-breasts. The life-water pooled in her lap. She swallowed a sinewy piece as someone else took their turn.