to ask me how old I am. 

She jokes that I will be as old as she is in a few years. 

I laugh, but I do not want to. 

 

She is 85, and she repeats her stories more often than not these days. 

Her spine is slowly curling itself into a question mark, answering all of my inquiries 

of what I will look like when I am older: smaller than I have ever been. 

 

I swear she shrinks after every visit, 

makes herself small enough to fit into her husband’s palm, 

small enough to pollinate the garden in her backyard that has not seen her face in years. 

 

There is a picture of me in her house, age five, standing next to an elephant ear leaf 

that could swallow me whole, that could cover my entire child body with green, 

and I understand why she wants to be small.

 

She wants to return to her dirt and sing lullabies to her tulips before the sun 

goes down, and she knows she doesn’t have

many more nights to wish for this. 

 

She may be all out of shooting stars, may have used all 

of her magic trying to remember her grandchildren at Christmas, and I can’t blame her, 

because she is the only one that remembered to call me on my birthday.