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Home > Poem | Lithium Balloon

I’d sneak off to the creek—the one my mother knew
Was plagued by polio.

 

Its bank was my nest where I gathered my twigs &
Sticks, my thoughts and...

The cold gloomy days magnetized me.
I was 8 years old and believed in

Most everything nobody told me.
I sat cross-legged quietly overlooking

The water and believed in God and all
They said in my Sunday pamphlets.

 

I believed in 5:47 p.m. the hour my sister was killed
By a drunk driver. That afternoon—
I ran all the way home
In my leg braces and floated up to sleep
In my iron lung, pills in hand. Higher & higher
& higher into the black.

Issue: 
March 25, 2016 [1]
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Poetry [2]

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[1] https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/issues/2016-03-25 [2] https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/poetry [3] mailto:[email protected] [4] http://www.facebook.com/commonwealmagazine [5] http://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/poem-lithium-balloon [6] https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/poem-lithium-balloon [7] https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/print/38209