Experiments in Folding Paper

A standard piece of paper can be folded only seven times.

The seventh fold marks the city limits of the physical

universe where the paper becomes thicker than it is wide,

the transition of doublewides to garage-apartments,

warty mixed-use zoning where you end up

origami’d into the dry cleaners & Po Boys

tires-and-rims after folding yourself into a bifold

wallet trashbags & a trunk bungeed over the kids’ toys

you don’t have room for but you can’t bear to dumpster.

Provided the paper is thin enough, though,

nothing stops you from folding.

It depends only on how thin you can go, or another way

to say the same thing: how far you are prepared to spread it.

Nothing stops you from going 1-ply, translucent in the stall

of the Big Lots bathroom where you steal the cheapest toilet paper

in the known universe, hand over hand in a graceful dance, unrolled

& folded & folded

& folded.