The Choice by Grove Koger

It’s a choice everybody makes and nobody remembers. They ask you, This way or that? So much depends, you see, but you make the choice lightly.

One of them forces open your mouth and slips the knife under your tongue. Now, the act is symbolic. You slice a magpie’s tongue free so that it can talk. But the knife in this case is a symbolic knife, and the act is symbolic, yet the blood is real and fills your mouth.

At first it tastes warm and sweet and salty, but the next day it’s bitter. Eventually you forget the choice, and the knife, but never the taste.

© 2013 Grove Koger

Grove Koger works as an adjunct reference librarian at Albertsons Library, Boise State University. He is the author of a play, Ruby Testifies (Black Box Theatre, Bloomington, Indiana, 1990), and a survey of travel literature, When the Going Was Good (Scarecrow Press, 2002), and has published short fiction in Two Words For, Skive, and Scareship.

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