In my head I am grilling lechon for my son's birthday.
The spit turns. Skin blistering toward that perfect crackle. Smoke in my clothes. Rice waiting. A feast for a boy who does not have a birth certificate—only a month for a name. Augusto. August made masculine. The most ridiculous, tender thing I have cooked all year.
August did not start on a wall calendar. It started under a poster that said Brand New Day—cinema dark, beside a friend who does not need naming here—watching a boy in a stubborn red-and-blue suit try to begin again while carrying weights nobody else could see. Ordinary explanation: just a movie. I left the theatre tired in the cells—and starving. Not for metaphor. For roast. For a table that does not apologise for being full. The craving was so loud it invented a guest list—not only Augusto. Faces from the month walk through the gate as if they had always been invited.
So here he is, in the backyard that only exists when I close my eyes: Augusto, with a temper like mine, already mid-argument with the air. Running like me. Jumping into a pool like me—cannonball, no warning, water everywhere. Then softer, because he got that from her: singing to Jie Mao the way I used to, nonsense voice, full ceremony, while the cat endures it like a saint. Sensitive like his mother. Warm in the places I am sharp. Cute in the way only an invented child can be—my face, her quiet, already half himself.
And around the long table—the guests. The one who opened a door for me once sits with a full plate, laughing, smoke in his hair. Gratitude finally has somewhere to put its hands. The one who left for a harbour far south is here too—sun on their shoulders, passing rice, no distance between us except the length of the table. Voices overlap. Someone asks for more crackling.
And there—Uncle Jimmy. My twin. Fresh back from the nomad years, suitcase still half-unzipped in the hallway of this imagined house. He has Augusto on his knee, or Augusto has him, hard to tell. Jimmy is telling everything: buses that broke down, kitchens that fed him for free, storms that renamed the sky, a city where he learned to wait, another where he learned to leave. Augusto listens with his whole face—temper paused, pool water still dripping onto Jimmy's shirt—asking for the next bit before the last bit finishes. Same blood. Different roads. At this table they meet.
For my son the table is wide on purpose. All kinds of diversity are welcome here—belief, appetite, the way someone holds a fork, the language they switch mid-sentence. Halal option available. Vegetarian option too. No fuss. No speech. Just plates that do not make anyone small. Augusto does not yet know the word for it. He only knows there is enough, and that nobody has to leave hungry or unseen.
None of this is breaking news. It is a birthday that will not be printed on any invitation. I call his name like a joke that stopped being funny and became dinner. August, if it were a boy—Augusto. Clever for half a second. Then devastating, because I can see him clearly now: sprinting between the guests, shouting, cannonball, crooning to the black cat, then going quiet when someone is hurt— her softness wired into my stubbornness. I came clean to myself about wanting that table. It feels good in the way grief sometimes does when it finally has a menu.
Hope is not a banquet. It is the next turn of the spit. Enough to keep the grill lit. Enough to imagine them all still seated when the crackling is done. Enough to understand, afterwards, what the poster was pointing at—not only the boy in the suit, but a brand-new day plated for someone who never got a date on a calendar.
Smoke thins. I tap the skin—it answers. Rice is fluffed. Someone has already set out the sauces. Jie Mao would have stolen a corner if he were here; instead he is a ghost of fur under the chair, waiting for scraps the way he always did. Augusto is still wet from the pool, temper cooling, half in Jimmy's story about a night bus and half tugging a sleeve, asking if Uncle wants more later—and whether the one who opened a door wants the crispy bit.
Jimmy, you almost done? Save the cliffhanger. Kid's hungry.
I lift the lid. Heat hits my face. The whole yard smells like a promise kept.
Hey Augusto—lechon's ready.