The incredible shrinking man: A supplication Andy Breckenridge

Andy Breckenridge

The Incredible Shrinking Man: A Supplication

‘The unbelievably small and the unbelievably vast eventually meet, like the closing of a gigantic circle. I looked up, as if somehow I would grasp the heavens, the universe, worlds beyond number.’ Scott Carey, pesticide inhaling protagonist of 1957 movie, The Incredible Shrinking Man.

Why did you inhale those toxins from the mist that let your vertebrae settle year on year? Admit the gravity that makes you shrink and list?

The elastic at your core slackens and untwists the gap between the sky and your white hair grows, from breathing in some toxins in a mist.

Won’t you fight this fall in altitude, resist the slump of shoulder blades towards the earth, refuse the gravity that makes you shrink and list?

The cat is now a giant, hear him hiss and scrabble at the doll’s house where you shelter and rue your breathing in of time’s cold mist.

Your body’s lost its snap; please get a grip. Can’t someone pull some strings to lift you higher and halt the force that makes you shrink and list?

Pull your bones apart some. I insist and hold your head up, don’t just disappear. Blow those toxins out, disperse this mist, reverse it so you needn’t shrink and list.