PIG ROAST

The year after they divorced and my mother
left me 3,000 miles from her new beginning,
my father threw a party before he took me
3,000 miles back. Our cutoff shorts had been jeans just
a month before and the air hung on our bodies
like a second skin too thin to keep the sun
from darkening our limbs. He roasted a whole pig
while I hung upside down from the frame of the swing set—
skinny legs coiled over the bar, the undersides
of knees rubbing back and forth easily
as I worked up momentum for a cherry-drop.
The tank top's red straps kept falling
off my shoulders in the rush, while my eyes
darted around the backyard, running up the length
of strangers' bodies, toe to head, their glistening
skin seeming to crackle every time I swung backward
and heard the sharp pop of the pig's fat dripping
from its mouth into the flames below.

I spun off the bar—legs folding under, arms gliding
out from sides, feet hitting the soft dirt just
as my father came into sight, standing at the pig's side, light
dancing between the aluminum beer can in one hand
and the blade of the knife in his other.
His face was as bright as the pig's pink skin, which fell
in thick chunks under the weight of the knife, eager
plates thrust forward to catch the meat.

I ate greedily, barely stopping to
chew, the hollow of my body so deep I knew
life would run out before I was
full. This is how it's done, person after person,
devoured by a need as immediate as hunger,
sallow bones tossed aside, the heart
a delicacy few will taste.

— heather lee cooper