When We Shrunk

“Feast” by Gwendolyn Joyce Mintz

When we shrunk, I took your tiny hand and squeezed it so hard in my tiny hand that you must have known I loved you. When we shrunk, we made swimming pools of our coffee cups, held our noses, and jumped. We climbed the stairs to the bedroom with belay ropes made of floss. When the whole world seemed to balloon around us, bigger than I cared to imagine, bigger than made sense, we took a vacation right where we were. We made it fit. 

You looked in my eyes and said, “Right sized.” You ran your hand up my leg and said, “My size.” Cars had never been so frightening. Doorways had never been entrances to temples. Bugs had never been horses. We could have played that tired game: whose fault is this? We could have done a lot of crying. 

When we shrunk, we exchanged other questions: How do we deal with the tumbleweeds of dust? These hairs that could be lassos or nooses. What work is worth it? Who, out there, will notice us now? We bought an apple, a single chicken thigh. One baby carrot lasted for a month. We had never said grace before, but we made our hands pairs of arrows, and I thanked the enormous world for what we no longer needed. You thanked it for the adventure. 

When we shrunk we were still alive. We didn’t disappear, not yet, like our grandparents, our parents, one after the next. Like the massive cat we would have ridden like royalty from the bedroom to the kitchen. Like the tree disappeared, and the shoreline. Like one star after another. When you were in another room, I got scared and called out, “Are you really still there?”

You were always more adventurous than me, and when we shrunk, that didn’t change. You disappeared for weeks, under the bed. You couldn’t resist the mysteries of the closet. You scaled the walls towards the window sills, as strong and agile as ever. 

“Please,” I said. You threw an arm over the ledge.

“Come up,” you said, “Look how big,” and how could I try and stop you. But what could be grander than this already too-big place.

There was your still-large brain full of all its questions. There was an open window, the horizon, the sky. In my mind, I took your tiny body and squeezed so hard you knew what I knew. I imagined you smaller than an atom. Smaller than a quark. I imagined you so small, this time, I wouldn’t miss you when you leapt.

About the Author

Rebecca Fishow is the author of The Trouble With Language (Trnsfr Books, 2020) and The Opposite of Entropy (Proper Tales Press, 2018).  Her work has appeared in Quarterly West, Tin House, Joyland, The Believer, and other publications. She lives in Chicago and is pursuing a PhD at University of Illinois Chicago. Find her at rebeccafishow.weebly.com or on Instagram @rebeccafishow. 

About the Artist

Gwendolyn Joyce Mintz is a writer and photographer. Her work has appeared in various print and online journals as well as anthologies. She is the author of three fiction chapbooks, Mother Love, Where I'll Be If I'm Not There, and Colored Girl.