Running "apk del" causes 368 packages to install

I'm running a RAM disk installation on a Raspberry Pi 3 of Alpine 3.4.1 with a 1 GB overlay. One of the directories that I am overlaying (the one taking up most of the space in the overlay) is /usr. I wanted to free up some space, so I decided to remove some packages using "apk del". However, whenever I issue the "apk del" command, the response from the command is to install a bunch of packages (368 packages to be precise). This is filling up my /usr area even more (thus having the opposite of the desired effect). For example, I issued "apk del xdm" (to try and remove xdm) and this is what I get in response:

agex-alpine:/usr# apk del xdm
(1/368) Installing libxau (1.0.8-r1)
(2/368) Installing libxdmcp (1.1.2-r1)
(3/368) Installing libxcb (1.12-r0)
(4/368) Installing libx11 (1.6.3-r2)
(5/368) Installing libffi (3.2.1-r2)
(6/368) Installing libintl (0.19.7-r3)
(7/368) Installing pcre (8.39-r0)
(8/368) Installing glib (2.48.1-r1)
(9/368) Installing atk (2.20.0-r0)
(10/368) Installing libxext (1.3.3-r1)
(11/368) Installing libxrender (0.9.9-r1)
(12/368) Installing pixman (0.34.0-r0)
(13/368) Installing cairo (1.14.4-r0)
(14/368) Installing cairo-gobject (1.14.4-r0)
(15/368) Installing libstdc++ (6.1.0-r2)
(16/368) Installing aspell-libs (0.60.6.1-r9)
(17/368) Installing hunspell (1.3.4-r0)
(18/368) Installing enchant (1.6.0-r10)
(19/368) Installing fribidi (0.19.7-r0)
(20/368) Installing libxml2 (2.9.4-r0)
(21/368) Installing shared-mime-info (1.6-r0)
(22/368) Installing hicolor-icon-theme (0.15-r0)
(23/368) Installing libjpeg-turbo (1.5.0-r0)
(24/368) Installing tiff (4.0.6-r3)
(25/368) Installing gdk-pixbuf (2.34.0-r0)
(26/368) Installing gtk-update-icon-cache (2.24.28-r1)
(27/368) Installing libxcomposite (0.4.4-r0)
(28/368) Installing libxfixes (5.0.2-r0)
(29/368) Installing libxcursor (1.1.14-r1)
(30/368) Installing libxdamage (1.1.4-r0)
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An on and on it goes. Eventually, the result is that all the remaining space in the overlay is filled and I start getting errors saying "no space left on device". And whenever I issue "apk del " to free up some space, the response is again to try to install the same 368 packages. Anybody ever seen this and/or have any idea what is going on?

Thanks,
BB