I taste hearts for a living.
It’s steady work. Seasonal, but dependable.
People like knowing there’s a market
for what they give away anyway.
The industry settled on different language.
Cultured, not harvested.
Ethical. Sustainable.
Yours arrives intact, still warm, vessels cut clean.
I take a small piece from the outer muscle.
Starting at the center ruins the read.
The first taste is mineral.
Yours carries savor.
Dense.
The flavor stays narrow as it moves,
never widening, never drifting.
I chew slowly.
Your sample maintains integrity through the chew.
The taste resolves without spreading.
When it clears, it leaves the mouth unchanged.
I rinse, sigh, release.
Approved.
Jessica Edmond writes poetry and short work that lives in the space where intimacy turns instructional and care becomes something that can be misused with precision. She’s interested in voices that sound calm, helpful, or affectionate while doing something deeply wrong. Outside of writing, she spends a lot of time paying attention to how language gets used to make uncomfortable things feel reasonable, especially in civic and cultural spaces. She is suspicious of neat explanations, drawn to dark humor, and has a habit of following an idea until it gets strange enough to tell the truth. She lives in the Midwest and believes the most unsettling stories are the ones that sound polite.
Published 2/14/26