Learning how to be smaller

by M. Frost

I’ve tried for a year to contain myself, to trim
the fat, to fit into the box (or the clothes from before).
To scrape words off my plate to meet the word count. I’m trying

to be smaller, but every day’s an incremental failure.
The tempting adjectives entrench, then an adverb 
sneaks in deliciously. I succumb, buy the larger of the men’s pants, 
the roomier women’s blouse. My bra bulges like the anpan I tried in Japan.
I cover it with shirts that don’t care. Order another syllable.

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Find M. FROST in The Hopkins Review, Little Patuxent Review, Strange Horizons, and others, with chapbooks Cow Poetry (Finishing Line Press) and The Women of Myth (Island of Wak-Wak). 

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