(2025)
Meat and Bread Walk with Me
Next are the sausages, all in rows. Pink and white spots trapped inside, tiny stars in a plastic sky. I think of the time our teacher draws Orion on the board, connecting chalk dots into a hunter. These are another kind of constellation, only stickier. Tiny drops gather under the wrap—sweat. That’s what I can’t stop staring at. Even dead things sweat, don’t they? Maybe they remember being touched by warm hands. I shiver, not from disgust, but because I kind of understand.
Then comes the bread. Two loaves, sitting there as if they don’t know they’re surrounded by meat. Just bread—brown, soft, kind. But my head won’t leave it alone. I remember my dream, where the bread speaks to me. Don’t wake up, don’t wake. You won’t like it outside. But I wake anyway. The ceiling has brown spots, and the radiator makes noises like someone locking me in. Maybe the bread tries to help. Maybe bread is nicer than mornings.
The knife stands upright on the board. I like how tall it is, how sure it looks. It makes me think of statues and graves and the white chalk squares we draw for hopscotch. One foot, two feet, jump, and I’ll be in heaven. I always think the heaven box at the top should stay there forever, but rain always takes it away. Maybe that’s what monuments are for.
The butcher comes out, wiping his hands on his apron. Dark spots on his apron, like shadows that stick. He looks at me—well, through me, really—and I think maybe he’ll give me a mask made of ham. Pink and see-through, soft on the face. I’d wear it all day and no one would look at me funny anymore. Maybe they already see it and just don’t tell me. Maybe that’s why I smell of salt sometimes, and why mirrors don’t feel like they’re mine.
But he doesn’t. He just says something about fresh today. Outside, the market is loud. Coins clink, people shout, bags rustle. But something has changed. The bread doesn’t glow anymore. The sausages are just meat. The pig looks tired. I remember what the bread says in my dream: You won’t like what’s outside. It is right. I don’t.
But I keep walking anyway.
The bread is still in my hand. I don't remember buying it, yet its warmth seeps through the paper. It feels alive, a faint pulsing. Confused, I try to put it down, but it makes a low, sizzling sound beneath my skin. Am I dreaming again? I AM NOT A CRUEL MAN. Holding it warm and pulsing, I would have offered my own nipples. Even if no milk came, I might have cut them open to at least let blood flow, rather than tossing it aside and feeding it powdered milk.
The bread sizzles against my chest. The butcher appears at the end of the alley, with the pig hanging behind him. Now the pig’s eyes are open. It just watches me—not accusing or pleading, simply waking. Oh, good boy, good boy, I murmur, stepping closer to soothe it. The bread stirs, a louder cry rising in my arms. Shh, baby, shh, shh… I have no choice. I unbutton my shirt, pulling out a nipple to feed it. It suckles, its crispy skin swelling and moistening. The scent of flour mingles with milk. I KNOW I CAN’T BE THIS CRUEL. I offer the other nipple to the pig. The pig neither cries nor struggles, merely oozing oil. Its mouth glistens, and white foam gathers around its teeth. Soon, both its mouth and its anus secrete milk. It is my milk. It only wants to be fed.
The butcher, unaware, steps forward, cursing the pig is a cow in a skin. I defend it. It only drank my milk. He won’t understand.
The butcher’s mouth closes. The alley smells of milk and smoke. I think of the market again—the chatter, the coins, the ordinary noise. And I know it never exists. It is only a rehearsal for this, when I would offer my nipple to breastfeed. I do dislike the outside. I dislike crying and fussing, dislike nipples, dislike feeding. I like being unawake, I like eating bread, I like eating the whole pig, I like eating children, I like stuffing them all into my mouth and chewing them to a PULP.
I’M NOT THAT CRUEL. I am beginning to squeeze my breasts as I walk. The milk doesn’t stop. It runs down my chest, tracing the grooves between ribs, until the bread begins to dissolve, its crust peeling. The pig is watching, its eyes following the rivulets. The butcher wipes his knife on the counter, slower now, and I notice his hand is trembling.
The butcher puts down his knife and reaches into the pig. Steam rises from its open belly. Inside is not meat, but loaves, breathing faintly, crusts rising and falling like my baby asleep.
See that? You crazy woman! he screams in relief. Everything gives birth to what eats it. Tuck those nipples away—they're not your children!
I want to protest, to tell him that I was only following the smell of bread. It's the smell that tempts me to feed more milk. He hands me one of the loaves. Feed it back, he says. Feed it before it remembers hunger. I tear a piece from my chest, where the milk had dried into pale crusts, and place it on the loaf.
I see my reflection in the butcher’s glass. My face is stretched thin and glistening, or maybe it is just a slice of prosciutto held up to the light. My eyes look salted.
Walk, says the butcher. I don’t know where to go, but I walk. The pig’s head turns toward me, and for a moment, it whispers. Take me along. So I do. I wrap it in thick, oily, translucent paper and cradle it against my belly like my baby. The stalls are shuttered out on the street. I keep walking. Every step drips milk.
I reach another stall. It sells only mirrors. Glass tastes foul and cuts my mouth, hunger fuels my rage. I struck one mirror in my front teeth. It does not shatter, nor does it scold me. Just whispers gently. Feed me. So I step through. Inside is a corridor lined with knives—the army of the upright—gleaming and endless. The floor is the color of meat. The walls pulse. It isn’t a corridor at all, but the inside of a pig. Blades parade before me within pig's body. I am walking through its body, through it of being eaten.
At the far end, a table waits. On it lies my uncle’s open coffin. His powdered face gleams under a thin film of grease. Pig and bread lie beside him, silent, obedient. I reach out to touch him. Milk streams from his mouth. You fed them, he says. But who feeds you?
I look down. My ribs are gone, replaced by loaves breathing. You may leave now, says the butcher’s voice. But I cannot. My feet soften, toes swelling, arches sinking into the grain of the table. I try to lift my hands, but fingers curl inward like the edges of baked crust. My skin bakes tight around me and the smell is familiar—home, funeral, bakery, all at once.
I am becoming bread. Not just any bread, but the bread—be fed, a milky flavor.
The air shimmers with heat; knives on the walls hum faintly as they reflect the sun. The entire room turns into a single oven. All flesh wants to rise. Even yours, says the butcher’s voice. I try to ask what he means, but my mouth is gone, replaced by a seam of dough. My breath comes out warm and sweet.
The pig is watching me from the table. Its eyes are
Walls melt into air, air into scent, of milk, smoke, bread crust, faint salted skin. I remember Mother’s kitchen. Her hands dusted with flour, her wrists red from washing. She would hum while kneading, pressing the dough until it sighed. She’d say: You have to feed, it tells you when it’s ready. I wonder if she can feed me now, if she would know I had finally become what she had once baked.
Something brushes my shoulder, the pig’s breath. You see? Never hunger, only baking.
Outside, I imagine the market still humming. I can no longer tell where my body ends. My arms rise into soft arches; my chest is round and fragrant. I feel the crust forming on my back, blistering into patterns that might be wings.
The butcher’s hand appears, hovering above me. I can not see his face, only the shadow he cast. Done, he says gently, as if speaking to bread. Perfect. He withdraws. Only heat remains.
The market returns. Coins clink, voices call, knives scrape against bone. People walk through me, through bread and pig alike.
My hands smell faintly of milk. I long to be open, to be shared. Then—the pig’s calm gaze.