Negligible

It’s not a secret,
my body is distorted.
Skin taut on bird bones
there is not a pinch to gather
to grow into and shout.
My weight is negligible,
a number too small for the scale
my little feet just barely sit
upon the cool metal.
I am nothing
not hair nor skin or eyelashes
I am not anything
not arguments nor agreements or trap doors
I am not even a reflection or a mirage
I am instead invisible.
Because though I am the size
of the mice and the dust mites and the insects
the giants will swat at them with brooms and meaty hands
they still leave me be.

Dwarfed by buildings
I tumble through the grass,
lost in the craters and cavities of the earth,
assaulted by the stories of life around me.
I am only reminded of my crippling difference
in the throes of a nauseating introduction
to the stuttering mistake of listening.
He is just as small as I am;
I feel as if we’ve found each other on accident.

~ “I thought I was the only one this small.” He is beautiful, dark lashes framing the deep midnight eyes. In fact, he is dark everywhere, inky hair and black bones set at harsh, awkward angles. He notes me with detached disinterest.
“No, I’ve been cursed too,” and all I can think of as I smile is the feeling of my thin lips pulling back over my teeth, over and over again, so quickly they begin to splinter. The gesture turns rueful and I frown, thinking of the door I slipped under and the house it belongs to.
‘It’s not a curse, you know, we do it to ourselves.” I know he’s not lying because his cavernous face is so earnest. But my fingers know the truth as they scratch against my twitching eyebrow, pull at my elbow, tug on my ear.
“The hell I do.” ~

When I return home it’s loud again,
the foreign quiet I found with the boy gone,
and it’s a reprieve I never expected in the words.
I can tell she feels huge under his gaze
though he is not much smaller
only where it counts.
Real life is elsewhere;
all too soon I face reality again
This life is as real as it gets.

And so it is the same,
monochromatic day in, unpromising day out.
She is clear in her scorn and
I cannot fathom that I am still alive;
Surely I would be flattened
under and her hatred and lumbering form.
Suffering under lack of understanding
Mother suffers from heavy disappointment
that settles onto her in thick folds and blankets,
on top of a sheen of exertion and sweat.
I am weak and bedridden so my skin shines differently;
shrouded by the giving up
lost in mother’s skin.

Lost in my skin . . .