Flying Inside Your Own Body by Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood

Flying Inside Your Own Body by Margaret Atwood

T.

I remember reading this back in college and feeling like Atwood has been in my head always.

Flying Inside Your Own Body

Margaret Atwood

Your lungs fill & spread themselves,

wings of pink blood, and your bones,

empty themselves and become hollow.

When you breathe in you’ll lift like a balloon

and your heart is too light & too huge,

beating with pure joy, with pure helium.

The sun’s white winds blow through you,

there’s nothing above you,

you see the earth now as an oval jewel,

radiant & seablue with love.

It’s only in dreams you can do this.

Waking, your heart is a shaken fist,

a fine dust clogs the air you breathe in;

the sun’s a hot copper weight pressing straight

down on the think pink rind of your skull.

It’s always the moment before the gunshot.

You try & rise but you cannot.

—

From Selected Poems II (1976-1986) by Margaret Atwood, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1987.

You might also like these:

I Was Reading a Scientific Article by Margaret Atwood

Variation on the Word Sleep by Margaret Atwood

The Woman Who Could Not Live With Her Faulty Heart by Margaret Atwood

Postcard by Margaret Atwood

Helen of Troy Does Countertop Dancing by Margaret Atwood

poetry