Onion Songs

ATTACHED

A mother takes needle and thread and attaches herself to her first born, a daughter.

A father weeps and shouts, What have you done to attach her so? How can you both live that way?

A daughter sews the first boy she finds to her left leg. Later she attaches an older, more attractive boy to her right thigh.

Eventually she has young men attached to her feet, head, shoulders, breast, buttocks, and groin.

I’m afraid it’s becoming quite difficult for us to walk, a mother comments in long-suffering resignation.

A father just weeps and wrings his hands over the foolishness of females.

A daughter attaches children with tighter and firmer stitches to all exposed parts of her body, until her own body is quite hidden by the bodies sewn to her.

Each child displays his or her own small needle and thread.

See, see what you have done! a father shouts at a mother. We’ve lost our daughter; she must be quite dead under there!

All the small children plead tearfully for their mother, once a daughter, even as they begin attaching food, feces, playthings, and other children to their own bodies with needles and thread.

Help, help, I’m quite suffocated! shouts a mother as she falls over backwards, pulling the mass of squirming, sewn-together bodies on top of her.

A father stoops over the crushed body of his wife, weeping and wringing his hands over the foolishness of females. He shuffles sadly away, absentmindedly scratching at the sewn-on corpse of his son, their second born, crushed so long ago between his great buttocks.