napowrimo #14

It's the little things

A small man looked at me, pinched me, and called
me "Little Bit." Pushed himself back from the table
with his feet. Got in bed with me and read Shel
Silverstein poems, pausing to ask me if I knew
what very small thing could scare even a hippopotamus.
"Hm. A virus?" I said. He just looked at me. "No."

I received the forgotten technology of a very small

book in the mail, delivered by the US Postal Service,

coming wraith-like from a bird-bone-collecting

woman to my north. She used to haunt me and

be too small and pale and laugh at my jokes like

an attendant spirit but now she is a vengeful ancestor

goddess, but one who is on my side. When she

came to New York I positioned her on the floor and

anointed her with oils. I placed a smooth stone upon

her third eye and called her spirit halfway back to her

body, as instructed by the small voice in my head.

This is why I receive this forgotten technology and others.

During the pandemic, poems by boys came winging or

crawled out from where they rested, speaking of my

smell, my equanimity, my tendencies, my intoxicating

qualities, and wanting to keep me company by eating

my snacks. You can't take that away from me, and

I have the bruise to prove it.