Fed up, she curls her fingers around the alien
rib, resects the offensive bone from her torso.
The last parasitic part of him. Less painful than
her expectations. She whets the glistening
osseous strip on the bark of that one tree. A new
moon slides across celestial scales. She returns good
and evil to him, buries the vestigial rib somewhere
friable. Pulsatile. Such disorder: a first for Paradise.