Film Adaptation of a Love Scene from My Unread Copy of Wuthering Heights

by Britt Ashley

We open with a wide-angle shot of perfect misanthropy, all pears and desolation. I love your eyebrows, the way everything sounds French for no good reason and most of all, your ridiculous name. The kind of name given to a boy raised by lions after he is finally brought home, shaggy, royal, and confused. This is a cup, a knife, a kiss, a plateful of dinner that never ran from you. Still, you keep meat in inappropriate places, secret rare steaks in the library, nestle tender legs of lamb in dresser drawers. I tend wolves in the nursery and pretend not to notice. Before you, I loved beyond my means, loved a girl so fiercely I swallowed my tongue before I could tell her. So now I am all brindle and howl, spoiled bitch, all yours.