My pregnancy went right for the first few weeks,
But then my son began to move about
Like an acrobat on stilts
Who isn’t the slightest bit sure-footed

My son grew bigger and bigger,
Although I barely nourished him,
And when he finished his dance
(Or rather, his somersault),
It burst out through my navel
And fell onto my bed with a plop;
I had given birth to a pink, slimy egg,
That I called, after much thought,
A baby

The thing was still warm from my womb;
The egg’s soft shell felt like velvet in my hands,
And I stroked it gently as if it were a living creature
That would soon hatch into a new life form

(My thoughts turned back to the moment
When a sperm came near to breaking through my egg
And made that strange movement
Which was the prelude to a unique creation,
One that was doomed from start to finish
By some cosmic accident or mistake,
And now the whole process appeared
Less mysterious than cruel)

At last the miracle occurred: the egg split open
And out came out crawling this beautiful baby boy:
A tangled mass of tentacles, beaks and teeth,
And a single eye, which rolled around madly

My son didn’t look at all like me,
And he also could speak telepathically
(I can only make out words
In between bouts of nausea and fainting spells)

“Mommy, can you hear what I’m saying?”
“Of course”
“Can you understand what I say?”
“Why not? You’re my son”
“You mean that you can see my thoughts
Floating there above my head?”
“Yes”
“What are they thinking now?”
“That you’ve just been born,
And that I should be proud of you”

My poor son couldn’t stand up properly
Without falling over,
So every time he moved his mass,
He got himself in trouble

Between wrinkles, his body hid tiny mouths,
Which contained fangs like those of sharks;
At night he would scream with pain,
And in the morning he’d cry out again

Instead of suckling on my tits,
This son of mine latched on to my skin
With half a dozen of his tentacles,
And sucked through my pores
Until the red stuff trickled out
From where I was bleeding inside

His little eye stared at me blankly
As if it were made of glass
While he sucked away at my flesh;
Afterwards, when he got tired,
He let go and fell down on the floor
In front of the mirror where I gazed at myself

After having been fed upon by him,
My breasts bled so much
That I couldn’t staunch the wounds,
Which itched and hurt terribly

My eyes looked dead;
I dreamed about black birds flying overhead,
I dreamt of the moon
As I was carried along under water

Sometimes my son was silent,
At other times he babbled unintelligibly;
All that was obvious to my eyes
Were the bubbles of blood around his beaks,
And the blood that ran down onto his belly
To mix with the yellow-green fluid
Of the pus that filled him up;
Also, slime covered him like an orange scarf

One evening as I lay asleep,
My son came down from his perch high above
And took a bite out of my breasts;
The bitten flesh turned black and fell away,
But he ate these bits of meat and sucked
On the wounds left behind

When dawn broke next day,
Both of my breasts were gone;
They probably flew far away
Into some other nest

When my son grew hungrier, he ate me
Until he sucked the marrow from my bones;
My blood is now all used up,
The tissues of my limbs are rotting away inside,
The nerves have died,
My bones are hollow,
My skull contains only air;
I am now just another victim
Of motherly devotion

I can never get rid of my spawn,
Not if I try forever;
After him, I don’t want any more children,
Nor any more slimy eggs

I will wait until I become old enough
For someone else to take care of me;
It will surely feel much better than tending
To this abominable son of mine,
Who has eaten everything there was to eat
Of what once belonged to me

‘I Gave Birth to This Thing’ by Jon Ureña