Small

 Herself speaks.

In sporadic intervals, as I struggle with PMS and fight -- sometimes fruitlessly -- against the urge to consume every carbohydrate within reach, I I contemplate this middle-aged body and its weight, and despair ever so slightly. And I resolve, once more, to try to become thinner.

Why do I want to be thinner?

Is it because I in fact want a different body shape?

Or is it, rather, because I miss the idea of smallness? 

To be small, is to be tended to, like a child or a pet. 

Perhaps that is what I truly yearn for.