I have thirty illegitimate children.
They were all conceived
during my month of weakness, April.
Every April, I become bedridden with a fever
that lasts a whole month,
during which, my spiritual powers
hibernate and the cosmic wound deepens.
Every night, my wife would ask me if
I wanted to eat Peyote with her.
I would retort no, so she would sneak out,
and make love to the plant of Peyote.
Every morning, while I was bound
by the spell of inner bodily conflict,
my wife would tell me,
each night, Peyote would shapeshift
for her.
One night, green Peyote became
a coyote, another night, an eagle, a raccoon,
an iguana, a manatee, a sloth, a zebra, a giraffe,
a waterfall, a maple leaf, the silk of a spiderweb,
the snot of a hippo, the grace of a crane,
the agility of many monkeys, the depravity of crows,
the solemnity of an elephant, the warmth of a tiger,
the roar of a lion, the protection of a bear, the colors
of the rainbow, the magnetism of the moon, the blazes
of the sun, the motherly embrace of lady death, the three
stages of a butterfly, the dreams of fish, the ambition
of the albatross, the softness of dirt, and for their final embrace
Peyote felt comfortable showing her his true shape, that of a cactus.
All my kids were born on the first of January of the following year.
My wife died during labor. I had to rebuild our humble home, to accommodate
thirty bunk beds. I also made rooms that soothed
their opposing tendencies.
I didn’t raise them alone, they had
each other.
The more ethereal offsprings would
break up and stop fights. When
Lioness wanted to eat the monkeys,
Rainbow would create prismatic walls
to break them up.
Lady Death and the three stages
of the butterflies would talk in a room that
was made of darkness and that had
a window that led to the Elysian Fields.
Recreating the ecosystem of the Earth
of a smaller scale was much harder,
but with the hard work of the Monkeys,
and the sturdiness of the spider web,
and the guidance of Sun and Moon,
the job got done in no time.
It’s hard to keep track of all of them,
specially Albatross and the Dreams of Fish,
especially after I turned 128 years old.
Even though they were without a mother,
I must have done
something right, since the thirty of them
are surrounding me,
here on my death bed, during my last month
of April.
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