Shorts

There was a tiny village set up downtown. I walked closer and realized it was a replica of our town. It was probably for the festival this weekend. The fair, or whatever. It was almost the Fourth of July.

The sky was turning colors before it was time for sleep (above our town and the miniature one). Ladies in dresses passed by the replica and pointed. Their husbands nodded.

I stepped inside and walked its streets like they were tightropes. Most of the roofs went up to my thighs. There was the church and the shops and the bank. The corner of 10th and Davis, where I wave to that girl that does that thing with her hair as she waits by the crosswalk. That thing with her hair that I like. Curled at the ends. Fishing hooks. She waves back sometimes and sometimes the corner of her lips pulls up.

Big me imagined tiny me and tiny her. Tiny cars that made us wait.

And then a one step, a two step, a three-block jump to my front door. I thought my house was already small enough. I wanted to see a washing line out back but I guess whoever made this wasn’t concerned with details. I didn’t think I was either until the line wasn’t there.

Tiny me was back home in my tiny bed with my tiny dreams: new cassettes and jeans that girl that does that thing with her hair likes and a cassette for that girl, too.

They looked stupid from up here.

I wonder which tiny house was tiny hers and if tiny me could come over for a tiny tiny bit and we could make tiny talk over tiny toast and tea. If that’s what she wanted.

I would tuck my stupid tiny dreams in the trunk by the foot of her bed, bury them beneath nightgowns that she grew out of so she’ll never see them again and they’ll never see her or daylight.

But it got pretty dark out so that I could no longer see any idea of us that ever existed. Ever ever ever. I looked everywhere for an inkling of a possibility; I even checkd my pockets and all my other pockets in my actual-size shorts by my actual-size bed.

But I did dream of actual-size me and actual-size her by the actual-size corner of 10th and Davis. Only a tiny bit, I swear. ♦

Bunny Miele is a 20-year-old visual design student in Franklin, Tennessee. She has dreamed of being an author and illustrator all her life.