I want to be little
in every sense of the word
thin
small-boned and beautiful, like a delicate bird, light enough to perch on your shoulder
or fly away when I no longer like the way you're speaking to me.
Once, I read that birds have hollow bones
How lovely and easy it must be to be hollow
Rather than filled with blood and guts and heavy bones that ache when they hear your name.
Little like a kid again
crawling into my mother's bed
and hardly taking up any space between the sheets so this time,
this time she lets me stay.
Little, before I got big and saw how cruel the world could be, back when the saddest thing I'd ever seen was another little kid eating his little lunch with little tears pooling in his little eyes.
But I am too old to sleep in my mother's bed, and too heavy dance gracefully like a little pink little music-box-ballerina, and just too heavy to lift myself from my bed in the mornings, held down by the weight of all the little things.
