There was a time he couldn't remember not wanting something.
Everything in his life was neatly pinned up by the driving spikes of desire in his head,
against a wall of unstoppable will and a disregard,
in lists and numbers and meticulous diagrams,
maybe unravelling a little in accidental dashes and spiky-tipped scribbles when it came to his brother,
but this was in the time he thought he could get around that.
When he'd been twelve and clumsy,
finding the last baby-chub on his stomach and pinching it blue,
no longer always left behind but still
forever falling behind at the worst moments,
he had looked to Dad,
bearish and bulwark as the Great Wall
which was supposed to keep out the invaders to the North,
and Dean, light as a cat on his feet,
adapting to whatever he needed to be by smirking, studied design.
Then he had hated them down to his aching bones and he'd wanted to be
tall enough to look them both dead in the eye as if that would solve everything
by putting it on the same level.
In the following years he'd just gotten taller and taller like he never could stop,
shooting up in the time when others were slowing down
and settling into the bones of themselves,
and he was still the target, the Jack of Beanstalk fame
(Jack wasn't the giant, that didn't even make sense),
the monkey bars to climb, a ceilling-fan accident waiting to happen,
an object of derision, curiousity, fascination,
all equally apalling to what he now thought he truly wanted.
This was his first experience with what might be called the Monkey's Paw effect,
and it wasn't salutary and he learned nothing at the time,
and the consequences of want piled on want piled on want like dirt on a grave.
Since then he's learned to hunch in on himself, to rein in everything
he's wished and made of his body over the years.
He's cut for necessity, whittled to precision points, no extremities,
and he can fold in and away like the best Pacific Cascade hiker's tent.
He couldn't want for more.