“Arg! This desk is a mess! I’ll never
get anything done in all this clutter. What are these bits of paper anyway?
It’s as if some tiny woman put them here just to distract me!”, the young man complained aloud, mistakenly thinking he was alone.
The tiny woman could hear all of this of
course, for the young man had large vocal cords that resonated across the
apartment. Standing a little off-center inside the water stained ring on an
unopened piece of mail- left hand on her hip she hollered at him while shaking
her right fist in the air,
“You fool! I didn’t put them there to distract you!
I put them there to get your attention! You’ve completely forgotten about me
down here!”
She used to be a regular sized girl
in his life, 5'6 to his 6'4. Her body would nestle perfectly into his as they
walked out after dinner for an evening stroll. She pressed into his side,
shaped into his shoulder and chest at the crown of her head. Warmed to him like
softening beeswax, distinctly her self but smoothed to his edge. They were inseparable
but not without a seam, each distinctly their own selves and uniquely for each
other.
The regular sized girl didn’t
notice the shrinking right away and the young man didn’t notice it at all.
Subtle at first, her reduction
hovered in her subconscious as merely an odd sensation that her clothes were
getting larger, as opposed to her entire frame getting smaller. As her regular
sized girl state continued to retract, her favorite sweaters began to drape
heavily off of her joints the fabric weighing too much for her to bear. She
felt slight and smothered and was forced to turn her newspapers, foil, paper
towels and wrapping twine into outfits with lightweight protection.
The shrinking girl became so
teensy-weensy that she had to ride around in the hood of the young mans
sweatshirt, slip into the coin pocket of his jeans or the cuff of his slacks
just to keep up with him. But even as she decreased in mass and volume she was
fairly certain that one day she would return to normal size, to be a bigger
thing in this life once again.
One day as he pocketed his wallet
and phone and threw on his sweatshirt he unknowingly swung her out of his hood
and across his desk sending her skittering across DVD cases, pen caps and
computer cords. She landed atop his keyboard, face down between the “L” and the
“O” key’s. Pressing upright she rolled over in pain and held her tiny skinned
knees in her petite hands. She gathered herself back together and looked up for
his outstretched palm to be there to climb into, but instead and to her alarm she watched him grasp his backpack and hurry out the door completely unaware of his actions.
Climbing down from the laptop the
tiny woman sat upon on a stack of index cards and cried. It had finally
happened. She had gotten to be so very small, so very teeny-tiny, so minuscule
in his life that he had completely forgotten that she had existed at all.
