Beneath my shirt and my skin, my red heart bangs against my ribs, a wild animal ready to break free and gnash its teeth at the throat of the world.

“Let’s do sirloin,” she said loudly. “Your father loves sirloin, doesn’t he?” I nodded. I hated sirloin. My father loved sirloin. But a man’s needs trumped a woman’s every time, I had learned that by then.

For a moment, we stare out at the scene, at the world dying before our eyes, and we fall silent at the sadness of it all. There is a short list of great levelers: grief, trauma, fear. In our fear, for a moment, we become the same person.

Sometimes reality hurts so badly we must twist it in order to go on living beside it.

Of course, I looked her up. I searched, and I found her, the girlfriend. It was a way of hurting myself, and I did it on purpose.

I imagine: the doctor plucking exquisite fruits from my womb, presenting them to me when I wake up. I am filled with: dragon fruit, passion fruit, guava, figs, pomegranates.

My problem is too big. It is the size of a child.

In the cage, the jaguar stretches her body. Her muscles flex beneath fur so dark it reminds me of the center of the black hole that floats beside her.

Will making this purchase fill the hole in my heart?