You like me when i’m small
when i wait for You to choose
what i like or when to call
who to love and who to loose.
You don’t like me when i loom
when i take up too much space
on a chair, or in a room
making cookies or my case.
There’s only room for shrinking
in Your presence, let me guess.
Smaller jeans and smaller thinking
buys me power, pays my debt?
Is it worth it? Currency?
If all i do is kill?
i hack and chop and waste away
becoming gaunt and shrill.
i fast and starve and lie
pretending that i’m full
but i’m really never satisfied
and the food is unremarkable.
i taste and suck and lick my plate
i choke you down at length
thinking “should i swallow micro fates?”
Or stroke a buried strength?
Could I vomit back those boring hours
spent becoming small?
Pushing, pulling, giving powers.
To them. To You. To all.
You wouldn’t like it if I grew.
Spoke up, or ate, or learned
to use my currency as if I knew
how much I’ve really earned.
You’d rather I stay silent
and practice being meek
than watch me turn to violence
in my sweet pursuit of speech.
I’ve very little patience left
for diets, or for fools.
I have a hunger to confess
expansion. Scandal. Truths.
I’ll simply eat delicious food
And grow and gain and sow
And read alone in shifting moods
And let the darkness know
that you can’t decide how big I’ll be
belittle though you try.
“Be little” doesn’t work on me.
I’m not explaining why.
be little
Aldora Cole
2024
Butterfly Press 