On Being Tall

Eight percent and the gap is waning,
or gaining momentum--I'm never quite sure but I do remember
the look Marie gave me when I brought home that 5'7" greek god
whose head could rest perfectly on my shoulder when standing
side by side for the family portrait.
She pulled me aside, her brow pointed arrows of spanish inquisition
she was trying her best to soften down into something invitational.
"he's short" was all she said--as if I didn't know, my sister's glow
fading with every sidelong glance at the man I had come to call love.

They didn't know what to make of us
this anomaly of anatomy
and so they stacked us like jenga pieces
right knee, left calf
left hip, right thigh
bended torso, heeled shoe
crooked lines, cooked shoulders, crooked seasaw hips
swinging back and forth with a pendulum of budding insecurity
that would give the man next to me just enough edge so
when he used my lower back as a footstool
clinging to me like the broken ladder I positioned myself as to feel "tiny"
a gendered sense of order could be maintained.
Everyone could rest easy.

One flash and the illusion was captured forever.

I tried to throw that picture away,
not the tangible plastic but the memory it engrained into my sense of right
of height and all that comes along with it. Love was
blindness, or should have been but when every shoe becomes a tool with which
to measure our compatibility, the correcting glass society had given us
became jagged, cutting our home deeper and deeper apart.
Though ninety-two percent of rent could be split up equally between us
that eight percent grew wider and wider, our planner thinner and thinner
as we found new excuses to stay inside, to close our eyes--to lie down,
to turn off the lights. To be apart.

Years later we got so tired of fighting over what building the tallest tower actually meant
that in the end nothing could ever stack up--we fell tumbling to the floor
hard-fastened, inanimate, resolved--the game was over
though to who was the ultimate victor I couldn't say.

Now when the photographer comes
they put me on the bench next to my seven year old niece and
at least I don't have to position myself complimentary.