Inch

This one was heavily inspired by the little baby green scrunchy inchworms that live in the lilac bushes next to my house. Thanks for existing, little dudes!

Inch

You pick yourself up, you put yourself down

Somehow you’re going forward

Your slanky green body belongs in the dirt

Not on my plum or in my bathtub

How far can you see?

Do you see my caterpillar eyebrows

Or just my big fingers when I try to

Pick you up and put you down in the flowers?

How big can you think?

Do you wonder about me and God and jellyfish?

I pretend that you care that

I put you over there instead of in heaven!

A house is no place for a squirm.

Danger and knives and disgusted faces,

Big boots and folded magazines out of nowhere

Human concept of “inside” and “outside”

Why isn’t a house a place for an inch?

When asked we will gape and say

beCAuse! Don’t you know?

Without stopping to wonder if we know for ourselves

Maybe

    just,

Maybe

I want a house full of inchworms

wall-to-wall floor-to-ceiling plants

and a floor made of dirt.

    The inchworms won’t kick me out of their house.