Todos Santos Cuchumatán
Guatemala

 

I awoke this morning, emerging from a strange dream. In the dream, I had arrived back in Los Angeles. I opened my pack to show my mother and some others a woven belt - a faja - purchased in Nahualá, an indigenous town near Lago Atitlán. There, nested on my traveling clothes, I discovered a very small, beautiful, naked infant who was very much alive. I picked up the Tiny One in my hands and he began putting my fingers in his mouth; he was obviously hungry. Carrying him to my mother, I laid him gently on her lap. She smiled as she told another woman to make a mixture of half milk and half formula. The baby was so beautiful, with glowing cocoa skin, silky brown hair and big brown eyes. I knew he was a boy but had not noticed his genitals - only his tiny size, the color of his skin and deep dark eyes on a face that just looked like a boy. I also knew that, although I had no idea how he had come to be in the pack, he was mine to keep. I felt happy and contented. I awoke from the dream feeling the same.

 

 

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