Ants

We’d been shrunk, through a series of mishaps, follies, maybe destined, maybe not. It is hard to tell, and while I think about it too much, silently and out-loud as I’m prone to, I can only accept that it happened. Blades of grass hung like ancient ferns over us. We took showers in single raindrops.
Let me explore you, he said, the neighbor boy with soft hair you lose your hand in, so wavy.
It was corny, I thought, to say it how he said it and how small we both were when he said it. Explore, the word from his lips. Explore: like I was a cave or sunken ship or corn maze.
My sweater, which had shrunk too, kept me warm and I said he should put his hand on my leg: it was small and naked. We would start a tiny kingdom if we couldn’t get back—build an anthill, live like farmers on it—and I looked up into the sky that had got- ten bigger, much bigger, a sky so big it made God seem possible. His hands making me feel even smaller. His hands turning into ants on me. We were the size of faraway stars then but no one could see us and I thank God for that.