Flying Inside Your Own Body

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.