The incredible shrinking man, and: In love with the walking

Abstract

The incredible shrinking man, and: In love with the walking Michelle Blake (bio) The incredible shrinking man When we were little, he was big. After a few Scotcheshe ballooned over the table, crashing into the chandelier with its stylish teardrops, slamming my brothersinto the corners, crushing my sister and me into the tapestry rug. By the time he deflatedchina shards littered the yard. Years later I forgave him. We walked the steamy streetsof Houston as dusk settled onto the Gulf, his head just at my shoulder. From his jacket pocket he flickeda small switchblade in the gleam of a streetlamp. I carry it all the time, he said. These days you have to.And I saw he had escaped nothing—the past lurked in the sharp-cornered shadows of bank facadesand the dimness behind shop windows. After the strokes, he had to be carried up the stairs.Not a problem. He weighed a few pounds, a few ounces. We could balance him in our cupped palms. At the tablehe would weep. All this beautiful food. But who can pay for it? His last night out we wheeled him through the dining roomof his precious club. People gathered to greet him. By then [End Page 170] he was hard to find, an egg in a nest of blankets. I lovedall your mothers, he told us, tears streaming. Then he died. Now I keep him in my pocket. Sometimes I forget he is there,then I search for Kleenex and find him, smooth as a button, whorled by time and sandlike a shell—and stand amazed so much could be shatteredby something as light and flawless as a single human soul. In love with the walking for JV, my teacher There's a sea you sail onwhere I have not been—galactic islandsblue-grey stretches of water the space between thoughts ________ You are a book I can almostread. Singingleaving a trail of crumbs Or surrounded by silencewalking aheadnowherein love with the walking [End Page 171] ________ I had misunderstoodwhat happens when we goto the far side of the mindand look out—not the abyss but blown leaves, lightning, red boat on a lake already memory, alreadynow as it drifts over the water to later [End Page 172] Michelle Blake Michelle Blake has published three novels with Putnam Penguin—The Tent-maker, Earth Has No Sorrow, and The Book of Light—and has also published poems and essays in Tin House, Ploughshares, Southern Review, Cider Press Review, Mid-American Review, and others. Her chapbook, Into the Wide and Startling World, was awarded publication in Finishing Line Press's New Women's Voices Contest. She also collaborated with the visual artist Fran Forman on a collection of images, Escape Artists (Schiffer). She's taught writing at Tufts University, Stanford University, and Goddard College, and was the director of both the Goddard and the Warren Wilson mfa programs. Copyright © 2020 University of Nebraska Press