The Piglet’s Curse
Guest Piece
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Guest piece inspired by “The Turkey” / Part 1 of eXis
Author: María Ahufinger 🎀
The Piglet’s Curse
I think I’m sick. I’ll say it loud and clear. I’m fucking sick. This is a curse. It was all my uncle’s fault, because he let me see it. It was a piglet. Small, pink, with bright eyes. A funny little nose and a chubby tail. I loved that it was pink; it reminded me of a stuffed toy. It squealed all the time, slept for hours, and still drank its mother’s milk. “When they grow up, they get ugly and fat. Look at its mother,” my uncle snapped. He was right. Chubby, greasy, but still funny. There was affection in all those rolls of fat.
But they took it away. The little pig screamed because he missed his mom. He looked around with the eyes of a disoriented animal. He was very afraid. They killed him. So much blood fell that I wondered how a body so small could hold a soul so big. From that day on, I got sick. I couldn’t eat a piece of meat without knowing what had happened to it before it was cooked. And there I was, at Christmas dinner, staring at the piece of turkey on my plate, waiting for it to tell me its secrets.
***
It smelled like wet earth. The fresh air mixed with the scent of the farm, the mud, and the mangos that had just been harvested. Dust barely lifted under my feet as I walked with the others in the pen. In that rural setting, where men were toughened from sunrise to sunset, two little humans appeared, too young to be corrupted. The younger one watched the older one with respect while he explained what farm work was like. Between them, a space was forming so intimate it shut everything else out. In the background, a melody was playing, climbing around them like a vine, trying to grow. That is what blinds the lover, who goes around acting like a gentleman. Without realizing it, both of them matched their breathing to the rhythm of the notes.
With the arrival of the music, the air changed. A different aura ran through my feathers and made me an accomplice to that instant. Sunlight fell, stroking their foreheads. The mangos, stacked in crates, released a scent that felt like the sweat of childhood. While the older one kept talking, the younger one watched him with an admiration that bordered on the sacred. I was afraid; part of me knew it was too big to be held between the two of them. Then the younger one raised his hand and I, feeling violated, drove my beak into it.
Blood gushed from his finger and the air shifted again. It turned hostile, authoritarian. It’s a feeling, almost an obsession. Fear grew between them like a magnolia, trying to clean what the blood couldn’t cover. The boss of the pen arrived and judged each one of us turkeys with the detachment of someone looking at his next Christmas dinner.
***
The plate of food came back into view. Shocked, I wondered how a piece of meat could be telling me that story. “Are you gonna eat something or what?” my uncle snapped. The smell of the food made me gag. “I’m not hungry,” I answered.
Had I said already that I was cursed? The piglet had cursed me; the fucking piglet. And now, because of him, I had to deal with the message the dead animals at Christmas dinner were bringing me. If the turkey was telling me that story, was I supposed to treasure it? Why did I feel the need to keep it and make it mine?
If I took a bite of the food, then the meat would belong to me; its memory would become mine. I lifted my fork to bring a small piece to my mouth. “Do you know this turkey attacked Don Alejandro’s grandson?” A cold sweat ran along my temples; those words confirmed what I already knew deep down. “Was he alone? Did he hurt him?” I wanted to know. “No, he was with a bastard orphan. Apparently, Don Alejandro’s family adopted him.”
I kept quiet, wondering why I felt the need to protect those kids from the cruelty of the world. There was something in them that would end up breaking them. The smell of wet earth and freshly harvested mangos came back to me. I saw them again on the farm, wrapped in air that kept shifting around them, wanting to project the echo of a whole life in which they would search for each other without rest. In that suspended instant, I wanted to know how real it was that they were meant for each other.
About the Text
“The Piglet’s Curse” is a text that manages to turn a Christmas dinner into a setting of tenderness, breath, and curse. Starting from a piglet, a turkey, and a narrator who begins to hear signals beyond what is real, the story opens a very organic bridge to the eXis universe: attention to the body, to empathy, and to smells. There are especially accomplished lines, like that question about how a body so small could hold a soul so big, which condenses the heart of the piece. Between memories and the smell of wet earth, the author builds a piece that is fierce and, at the same time, deeply tender, where meat stops being just food and becomes an archive of what has been lived.
Gon Vas
About the Author
María Ahufinger 🎀, creator of the space Donde la herida escribe, builds bridges through trauma, memory, and feminine identity. Her sensory style seeks to express through the body what language sometimes keeps quiet: scars, quiet spaces, and everything that is hard to look at. For her, vulnerability is synonymous with courage; a territory where sadness turns into revolutionary tenderness.