AGUR Is the Last Way I Learned to Say Goodbye

Javi cuts the morcilla, flipping it into the pan. It is de casa, the pig. Homegrown. He tells me how they did it: men grasping hooves, the butcher, a woman catching blood in a 10-gallon bucket, beating it with her palm and thickening it with rice. Filling intestine casings, tying off sausage links. Javi cooks, his back to me, so I look at him the way I always want to look at him: deliberate on his arms and neck. I imagine being there to make blood sausages. To catch and beat and thicken. I eat, intestines sticking in my teeth.

Photo credit: J. Dominiq