Smallifying

If I don’t at least try, I think it might kill me.

The shrinking, I mean.

I watch the ripples on the water’s membrane

flowing in reverse,

until they are only the size of the first wound

that broke the surface tension.

A casual violence, however benign the pebble.

/

The numbers that make up my age,

(according to the calendar)

only march up, up, up,

unforgiving and uninterested

in this vague, underwater panic that I barely have the time to give credence to,

even as it kills me.

/

All that is and was and could be me

sinks slowly to the sandy, sunless bottom,

shrinking as if to enter Alice’s wonderland,

when we both know the secret;

there’s nowhere magic to go; only madness.

/

I loathe my increasing smallness, even as I feed it,

shoving all my broken dreams,

apathetic drinking, procrastination, and fear of change

down the wretched and choking gullet until it is glutted.

/

I want to stop, but I don’t know how to seek and seize

the antidote with my withered, bird-like hands,

smaller today than they were yesterday.

/

I am the poison. I am the cure.

And if I don’t at least try, I know it will kill me.

/

The shrinking, I mean.

//