Eat Me Drink Me

When I read Alice I was relieved

to find it had happened to her

although it was her fault for snacking

on food that was left about.  Good children

never do such a thing because of Germs.

I was a good girl, but it only needed

the light to snap off at bedtime

and I was lost in the swelling, swelling

enormity of myself.  Huge.

Floating, I bumped each corner

of the black muffle of night,

until I dwindled, dwindled,

diminished, smaller,

smaller, tiny, smallest,

hardly there, a grain in the bedclothes,

a taste in the mouth, only that,

barely that…

I got to the light switch in time,

examined my hand, found a mirror –

I was back again. This was me.

Then I would read a book to forget about it,

Not Alice though, never Alice.

She was down underground with the worms and dead people.