After a pig slaughter, my father
brought my mother a bundle
of bones wrapped in butcher
paper, a brown gift, and I watched
my mother dunk each bone
carefully into her pewter witch's
cauldron; water roils, the slivers
of flesh darken in scalding heat,
bits and pieces of sinew flake
off. All for her
sopa de hueso,
bone soup, for my ailing grandma,
for the living and the dead,
the marrow of life, as she called it,
between us all, enough substance
to uplift our spirits, and nourish us.
