Hogs

A pale pig stands in the corner, snout to the ground, rooting for something only it can smell. Above it the old boar wakes in a riot of pink: snouts and tusks, a curling tail, eyes ringed with lashes like sunbursts, bones tumbling loose through a body stitched together at every seam. A small temple rises among the chaos, columns and all, a reminder that pigs have been feasted on and sacrificed and bargained over since the first villages were built. On a farm in Waihī our pig named Molly was a grunt by the fence and a whole season’s worth of food. It has always given everything, and it has never been thanked enough.