Ginny Lee

There was a dawn
When freight trucks rumbled by my window

When time felt like discarded coins
In an abandoned arcade

I pushed my hand into my chest
To keep it all in
My soul, I mean

“It’s leaving me.
So what,
So shit.”

I thought about many things
As I held tightly
To the balloon string
That grounded that
Wretched, unsaved
Soul

About how
No one had an inherent need for me in their
Bodies
Because they were born in water
Not fire

A vision of our clothes becoming dated
As he begins to stoop

The hand of someone’s daughter
Pressed to my ear
Asking if I hear the ocean
I don’t

How I’m so sorry
That you met me on a hollow day
Back when my head was so full of cotton
You could’ve plucked it out
From my ears

How badly I wanted a face that belonged to me
To take ownership of it

I thought about when I was 18
And she said she was scared
And guilty
And I couldn’t breathe

And all the while
My soul bloomed

It’s buoyancy taking it
All the way up to the ceiling 

The sound of the trucks outside made me feel sick

But when I talked to you,
You felt like
A friend

And somehow that felt better

The thought of meeting
Years down the line
Where enough time has passed
That you will seem tall
All over again

Then my soul felt heavy enough

That it sank down slowly
So as not to be crushed under
An oceanic pressure

And it felt okay
That I didn’t know who God was

Or how I didn’t say anything to him
When he walked past my locker
Before he died

How she touched his hair in the first row of the theater
Twirled the arrow
At the nape of his neck

The notion of a picture
That some kid will look at
Their friend, looking over their shoulder, will say
“You look like her”
And the kid will feel good
On the inside

The soul sank to the ground then
Till it too could feel the rumblings
Of the passing trucks
Outside

It was up to me to grab it

“A strange decision,” I thought.
“So what,
So shit.”

I couldn’t help but laugh
Creating my own rumbles
From my shaking, soulless ribs

Maybe we are just diced peaches
Suspended
In a cough syrup-flavored jello
A twisted rendition of
The plum pudding model

The soul heard my thoughts
Over the traffic of freight trucks

It smirked and quipped
So what,

      So shit

I grabbed it by its
Thin balloon string

And pushed a hand into my chest.

Ginny Lee is a senior studying Radio/Television/Film and environmental sciences. She thinks chocolate mashed potatoes can be a thing. If you just change your way of thinking. It can work.