Attentuate

To make thin, weaken (v.)

Carter sat whittling on his porch, looking at the long dirt path leading to his house. He waited for the mailman to come, whittling the end of a branch to a sharp point. His house lay between two town lines. No one knew about him except the mailman, who only dropped the mail off in the mailbox and waived and drove away.
Carter's eyes were draped with ancient rings of skin, his neck was thin and bent like his thin arms and thin torso hunched into a whittling position. He sat repeating the whittle motion so the the end of the stick was sharp, needle-sharp, and he saw the tires of the mail truck rolling up the dirt path leading to his house, the tip of the stick getting thinner and thinner until, just when the mailman got out and brought the mail to the mailbox, the end snapped, unable to whittling anymore and maintain its strength.
The mail man waived and carter waived back. Then he threw the broken branch into a pile of similarly over-whittled branches and went inside his house.