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.
