Heritage

When I was a child, my grandmother gifted me
a small replica of the stone used to grind corn
into masa,
and I have it on my kitchen shelf, even now, next to my mortar and pestle.
At my parent’s house, there’s a big one, a real one,
the name for which I have been told by so many
it is not necessary to know,
but which I repeat to myself,
sing to myself,
the defiant song of clay beneath my skin.