Nonfiction by Michele Johnson

1. Not large, comparatively less-than, insignificant (see also: slight, tenuous, negligible)

You were small to begin with. During freshman year, your health professor has everyone perform a skinfold test to calculate their BMI. He announces yours in front of the class. The room is filled with desks and the increasing distance between them. His voice sounds far away: You’ll have babies soon. Eat for them.

2. Minor in influence or power, unlikely to cause problems (see also: secondary, inferior) 3. Humiliated, as in (H)e made me feel small.

You are so small that men hold the door for you. This is called chivalry, a code of conduct named after a kingdom built high in the sky on an invisible pedestal. In the center of this kingdom is a town populated by little women who are seemingly never hungry, owing to a litanous supply of apples, which are espaliered along well-swept streets. The women navigate (never prune) the canon of sturdy trellises. Sticky, sweet juice drips from their chins.

You’d think it difficult to travel to, but Chivalry is actually harder to return from. A (M)an you used to worship blamed altitude sickness.

4. Operating on a limited scale 5. Young (see also: underdeveloped, stunted, child-like)

It’s obvious now; you’re getting smaller. After lying in bed for six weeks, there’s a full-inch discrepancy between the tips of your protruding hip bones and the salvation in your womb. Your left hand rests on a Ziplock bag warm with a few tablespoons of foamy yellow bile. Your husband offers to buy anything you might keep down. When he returns, he doesn’t tell you he stopped for General Tso’s chicken and ate it in the car. He doesn’t have to. You lose a few more tablespoons of yourself to the Ziplock bag.

Days later, the nurse tells you if you don’t eat we’ll have to put you in the hospital. Her breath stinks of fermented apples. You wonder why she’s scolding you as if you were a child.

6. Weak (see also: fragile, frail, ashamed)

Signs and Symptoms of Hyperemesis Gravidarum:

  • Severe nausea and vomiting
  • Weight loss of 5% or more of pre-pregnancy weight
  • Food aversions
  • Extreme fatigue
  • Confusion
  • Anxiety/depression
  • Increased salvation salivation

Though there’s no proven cause of hyperemesis gravidarum, researchers suggest several possibilities. These include genetics, rising levels of a hormone called human chorionic gonadotropin, and increased estrogen and progesterone. If you weren’t so small, you’d add to their list:

  • eating affected apples
  • altitude sickness

7. To dwindle, as in * . . . smalled till she was nought at all.[1]

Years of altitude sickness (?) give you intestinal metaplasia, putting you at high risk of stomach cancer. Your physician instructs you to take smaller and smaller bites, which you do because you love your husband and five children (They, too, have sworn off all varieties of apples).

You somehow lose another ten pounds and wonder if this is how you will finally disappear.

[1] From “The Clock of the Years” by Thomas Hardy (1916).

Michele Johnson (she/her) (Instagram: @thelyricalwild) is an emerging writer living in the Cascade Mountains of Washington state with her husband and five unschooled kids. As an introvert, she enjoys exploring both the Pacific Northwest backcountry and her vast inner world, and she sometimes confuses the two.