Shrink — Leah Rogin-Roper

I can’t hear you
anymore
talking
about how you
want your body
to look.

Tell me what your body can do
how it
stilled / mountain pose
hiked / hills
sprung / cartwheels
flung / itself
off of
a rock
or a high place

into
a body of water too cold and pure
for swimming

I’ll even listen
to the ways
you want
to train / your body
to learn / something new

to hear / bird songs
or play / chords
hitchhike / roads
navigate / streams

Tell me the miracles
How your body grew / life
healed / broke / recovered / danced / destroyed / cherished

Tell me the frivolous
That your chin / grows
one long dark curly chinhair
at random intervals
how when you are alone you allow
even your hard places to be soft.

Tell me how you slept / somewhere impossible
Or dangled / a toe into
a space you ought not to
How you held so still that some creature mistook your body for grass
And crawled / over you
Tickling

Tell me how it stung
Sang
Prayed
Mourned
Played
Created

Let me see your body in motion like the liquid machine it was meant to be
Jolting hurling throbbing exploring exploding

there are so many verbs
that are more interesting to put next to your body
than
shrink.

Don’t shrink.
Don’t tell me how you shrink.

Leah Rogin-Roper believes bodies are made for action.  Some of her verbs include hike, snowboard, travel, and write.  Some of those verbs are also nouns.  Her work has recently been published in Progenitor, Blink Ink, and The Rumpus.  She teaches writing at Red Rocks Community College and lives in the mountains west of Denver.