he cuts himself open for all to see, to hand out gifts to his children. he parts the skin gently, lest it tears and pushes away the fat.
his right lung is made up of cocoons as if grapes on a vine and he plucks them one by one until he finds it difficult to breathe. something squirms in each one and as one child holds it up to the setting sun she sees that each brims with scorpions.
his massages out his spleen gingerly, slippery to the touch. out from it comes cockroaches of various shapes and sizes, from translucent, where the children could see the process of their organs, to thick and dark brown, almost beetle like.
and as he does this the centipedes and millipedes that he has for intestines snake out of the wound and slither and slide, up and down the length of his torso and chest. the children poke and they in turn come off his body and arch backwards to be petted.
until he is spent. he collects his belongings and pulls from his bag, needle and thread. stitches himself up to their dismay, as if all of this had been for show. once he bites the excess from the knot, he is gone.