After the ceremony for my naming, my father pluckedthe tongue out of the mouth of the roasted pig and held itclose to my own mouth. Of course my instinct was to suckon it, unable to tell how this rough skin differed from that of the woman who took me to…  | By Luisa A. Igloria on September 4, 2024 | After the ceremony for my naming, my father plucked
the tongue out of the mouth of the roasted pig and held it
close to my own mouth. Of course my instinct was to suck
on it, unable to tell how this rough skin differed from that
of the woman who took me to her breast after I was born.
He was exultant—believing my capacity to so eagerly root,
seek salt from flesh, sustenance from a leathery form, a story
from something pierced and singed and shorn then turned on a spit,
meant I would command not only language but circumstance.
I've wondered: is this why we ask our stories to wear meat
on their bones, to drip with the lard and sauce of their origins, come
apart where they should at the seams or joints? More than once
after this instance, I have been anointed. I have been intimate with
a thing that was at first not my body, until it became part of me.
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