My Life

The huge doll of my body refuses to rise. I am the toy of women. My mother would prop me up for her friends. "Talk, talk," she would beg. I moved my mouth but words did not come. My wife took me down from the shelf. I lay in her arms. "We suffer the sickness of self," she would whisper. And I lay there dumb. Now my daughter gives me a plastic nurser filled with water. "You are my real baby," she says. Poor child! I look into the brown mirrors of her eyes and see myself diminishing, sinking down to a depth she does not know is there. Out of breath, I will not rise again. I grow into my death. My life is small and getting smaller. The world is green. Nothing is all.