by Heather Ball

Picture a Venn Diagram.
Hand drawn with circles,
Imperfect, like eggs pulled off the sorting belt.
The left, me, literally.
The right, me: my figure, figured (figuratively).

And me in the middle.
My body a sacrament filling the shape,
Wide in the middle, tapered at the top and bottom.
So smooth in places I’d slide into your flesh.

My smokey lungs are wind chimes, chiming.
My skeleton: brittle little crickets bending at the joints to jump.
My mind kills itself like a dog damned.

Reduce me to this. On paper.
&&&&&&And prove that you know me well.
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Heather Ball 

Heather Ball is an English Language Arts teacher in the Arkansas Delta. She enjoys writing poetry and personal essays about the minutia of life and the complexities of interpersonal relationships. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in English from The University of the Ozarks.

Artist: Stephen Doyle