The Small Man
Something in the gym doesn’t belong. No one speaks of it, but everyone feels it.
A small man moves through the gym.
He grips the bar too tightly, wrists trembling, shoulders folding inward as if cowering from an unseen threat.
His movements are slow and uncertain, every lift ending before it should.
He’s easy to overlook at first, then impossible to ignore. Something about him disturbs the order of things. He’s out of sync with the rhythm of the room, the sound of metal and breath. The eye catches on him, and the longer it lingers, the harder it becomes to look away.
He draws attention. Not through strength or noise, but through the sheer discomfort of being seen. The mind rejects him like a splinter.
Disgust turns to effort.
The training sharpens. Reps extend past pain. Meals are weighed. Sleep is rationed. Every habit becomes an act of refusal, a quiet insistence that the small man belongs to someone else.
He stays small.
The other grows.
But no matter how much space is filled, the small man is still there. In the mirrors, in the edges of the frame; always visible, always unchanged. In every reflection, in every flash of polished metal, a shape too familiar to forget.
He isn’t competition. He isn’t threat. He’s worse.
The weights rise. The muscles harden. The other expands.
Still, the small one stays.
And they lift together, side by side,
each trying to outgrow the other,
knowing neither ever will.