By Kiana Heilfron

My husband is a hunter. I do not know when his urge to kill started, maybe as a kid, maybe as a hobby, maybe to fulfil some nagging desire to be good at something. Fox tails hung like trophies, each death a token of boosted ego. My husband is a generous man. He gives me fur coats and lavish rugs and I hate these gifts only one bit less than I love him, and so I accept, accept, accept. But all this pain, it has nowhere to go. And so every once in a while, when I’m feeling especially guilty, I’ll visit the lives not yet lost. The children who still have their mothers and the mothers who still have their children. I visit the foxes in that weary time just before dawn, where the grass is still dewy, where the blue light stretches out beyond the tree tops, and everything still feels chilled, like a memory frozen in time. I whisper to the creatures of Earth, tell them nonsensical things, and watch as they play, carelessly, thoughtlessly, like children in the snow. I do not know how anyone could kill such beautiful beings.

I watch as the sun peaks up from between the trees and that morning mist goes away, and the blue light retreats into the air as warm light takes its place. Before I go, I kiss their gentle noses, so as to say goodbye over and over again. I return home with the lights still off and climb into bed like a falling tree. I wake up as if my early morning secret was as impermanent as a dream and in the morning I convince myself it really was.

Later that day, I watch as my husband prepares for his afternoon hunt. Ammunition packed like daily pills, his guns and knives like lovers. Sometimes I think he respects his hunting weapons more than me, the he way carefully packs them and cleans them, hangs them in a shed, he builds walls over these death machines. He protects them the way mothers protect their children; with urgency, with care, with intentional love.

Before he leaves I tell him, “Be safe!” I do not know whether I was talking to him or through some delusion that I could carry that message to the foxes. I wait patiently and quietly do odd jobs around the house. When he comes home, I see his faded smile before I see the blood. I let go of that little prayer beating in my chest and recovered quickly enough to greet him at the door. As he goes to wash his hands, I start to think that even the lukewarm has more warmth than him.

In a few moments, I go out to the shed where the dead animal rests. Upon entering a great doom hangs over me, I feel the distance of the prayer getting farther and farther away, and once I see the orange and white tail it escapes eternally. I creep closer and realize that this fox is young. I think about the child foxes playing in the grass, how lively they looked, and how lifeless this fox now looks on the cold table. I look around at all the weapons hanging on the wall, I resent them and yet I know the joy they can bring. My husband calls and I realize I must have been there for several minutes longer than I intended. Luckily, I mourn the dead the way I mourn the living; briefly, quietly, and with intentional love.

When I return home my lover tells me about the mother fox he briefly saw just before he shot the child. He said how he felt bad immediately after, and how he can still see her lingering eyes. I console him and tell him I know those eyes very well. Thoughts churn in my mind as I think about the mother fox. I see now why mothers have children and why the fox stopped to stare at my husband in the eye. I think she must have known it would end like this. A life without love is a life not worth living. That’s what I think anyway, and so when we retreat to bed like limping puppies to their mother’s side, I kiss my lover's gentle nose, so as to say I understand, over and over again. It must be a terrible thing to be in love with a killer. To be a hunter in love with his weapon.

Foxes/Hunter

Maze

Fresh Fruit