In Mexico, we’d buy goats before for our large family parties.

My cousins and I would crowd around them to pet their soft haunches,

not fully conscious that these acts of adoration would be the last of their affection.

And then we were ushered away to be distracted somewhere else,

unknowing the creatures we’d just begun to love upon

now instead were filling our bellies in warm welcome and family reunited.

At what they deemed an appropriate age, I finally witnessed the pink-and-porcelain marbling

hung from the rafters of the tin-roof car park and the whirls of blood that drained beneath.

It felt some sort of offense.

Not because the goats every summer had been loved and butchered and savored,

but because the tradition of it all had been shrouded in the unnecessary cloak of secrecy.

 

(Hour 15)