Chucky takes his government-issued peanut butter and jelly sandwich and cuts it in half with his plastic knife. A perfect line down the middle. He nudges the plate across the scarred Formica table toward me, points to one half with his plastic knife, “This one will make you big.” He points to the other half, “This one will make you small.”
I eye the offering warily. “What if I don’t want to be big or small?”
He leans in, his brown eyes swelling to hypnotic orbs. “You want to be medium? Ordinary? Normal?”
“I do not want to be so big that my skull shatters the roof, and I accidentally stomp on you. I do not want to be so small that you accidentally stomp on me.”
A sly grin cracks his face, mischief flickering like static. “I would risk getting stomped on to see you tear the roof off this cage.”
“I cannot decide between being invisible and being stared at.”
“It is a conundrum,” he murmurs, gaze drifting to the institutional walls closing in. “It’s so like the government to make all your choices terrible. Maybe we should ask the caterpillar. Perhaps he can tell us who we are.”
“We ought to hurry then, before he turns into a crysalis,” I say.
Chucky stares at me, and I can’t quite decipher the look in his eyes. I’m quite sure I’m interpreting it all wrong, because it looks like something that resembles love.
Poetry for the void 