Next, Grandad proffers her a scalpel for his big hairy ears. Though she finds it a bit odd, she super glues his ears to the bulky black stereo in the garage. So we can listen to Bob Seger and Taylor Swift on cool summer nights, he explains. The more she takes from Grandad, the more he falls apart. But she cannot disappoint him. She sets his mouth by the billiards table so he can talk smack with the guys. She hangs his nose by a wire in the kitchen so he can smell Grandma’s freshly baked coconut cream pies. 

The granddaughter eventually asks her Grandad why he gave her this request instead of her parents, or her cousins, or her Jesus-looking uncle who lives in Utah. You’re smart enough to figure it out, he says. Now here’s a saw for my brain. 

After mounting the slimy pink organ by Grandad’s Dime Westerns, placing his liver behind the shelf of half-drunk bourbon, and his lungs beside ashtrays, the girl visits him for the final time. She asks Grandad if he wants her to take his bones or his kidneys, but he doesn’t respond. Within the silence, it’s obvious he has nothing left to give. 

The granddaughter grows up and moves to a college out east. She’s dead set on trying new things like lobster rolls and mushrooms from the RA across the hall, but these things come and go. Eventually, her family sells the house where she had dispersed Grandad’s pieces. The new owners ditch the garden, sledgehammer the mantel, break down the billiards table and burn the Dime Westerns. When the granddaughter comes back after so long, she hops the fence while the new owners are asleep and silently paws at the spot where she had buried Grandad’s heart. Though, a dense layer of earth has pushed the heart deeper than what she can dig for. But that’s okay. She smiles and thinks about the artichokes—how the heart is always there, just protected within layers of petals.