Ball

Curtains draping
over lungs
netting over
the tiny me
in my spine
melting
and wet
like a funeral
but only stretched out unfurling into snake
swelling into netting
so large it chokes out the Earth
& like a stress ball
I squeeze it
till the ocean
runs down my palms
through my veins
as I turn inside
crouching,
folding into myself
draping flannel
over my windows
& unfolding
into dollhouse
& I’m in
taking tiny bites
of a plastic pancake
until I can wake up.

Click here to read Gina Tron on the origin of the poem.

 

Image: “Untitled” by Radarxlove, licensed under CC 2.0.

Gina Tron:
I wrote “ball” after feeling like a ball of stress over the pandemic, just as the county I live in was going into lockdown. I kept waking up with the same sense of dread, which I can only compare to how I felt after someone I loved died. The difference, of course, was that these heavy feelings did not just pertain to me in my own bubble, they were connected to something on a world scale. The feeling was inescapable: When someone I loved died, I would go into the grocery store and the cashier would be oblivious to my struggles. Now everyone around me was sharing the same dread. That was a notion that was hard for me to process. Through writing this poem, I tried to articulate how this familiar feeling of grief was washing over me while acknowledging that it was related to something global.

Gina Tron
Latest posts by Gina Tron (see all)
  • Ball - February 26, 2021

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