The Heart

It’s been over an hour now but the heart is still warm, despite the cold of the night. Sure as hell it’s palpitating in his grasp. He keeps it at arm’s length, doesn’t want to stain his clothes. It’s still bleeding, the smell heavy, like a nail dug in moist earth. He cups both hands around it to avoid dropping it.

The moon is swallowed up by the canopy of tall trees and as though he’s blindfolded, he trips over a rock. He stumbles and falls on all fours. The heart jolts away, eaten up by darkness. On his knees, he scrambles to some bushes, parts the stubborn, thorny branches, scratching the skin of his hands, scrabbles about the frozen soil, fingers nicked, arms sprawled, eyes stretched.

‘Oh, My God!’ He says. ‘My wife will be furious if I lose the heart.’ She was resolute. Bringing her the heart would be the proof positive of his unconditional love to her. That’s all she craved.

He’s lost all hope when a tiny voice comes from behind a rock.

‘Are you hurt, Yannis?’ He springs to his feet and darts there. He takes a firm grip of the heart again. Definitely pumping, fast now, in and out, sighing and moaning like a deflating birthday balloon.

‘I’m fine, Mother,’ Yiannis tells the heart, clenched in his hands. That’s typical of Mother. Always worrying about things that are none of her business; a scarf he’d forgotten to wear, a sandwich he hadn’t eaten at school, a scabby knee, a wife she never wished for her son.

*

Biography

Konstantina Sozou-Kyrkou lives in Athens, Greece and writes in both English and Greek. She has studied Literature and holds an MA in Creative Writing from Lancaster University. Her stories have been published online and in print in several literary magazines and anthologies, some of which have won in competition in Greece and abroad.