Poetry

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 light too & huge,
beating with pure joy, 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 your dreams you can do this.
Waking, your heart is a shaking 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 just before gunshot.
you try & try to rise but you cannot.

By: Margaret Atwood

Atwood's use of similes and metaphors give a interesting aspect to the poem and help set the scene and actions of the person referred to in the poem. She never uses the word and only the sign which is interesting about her style of poetry, when she can use a symbol she does instead of the word. I like the scene the poem presents of flying in your dreams, how in your dreams anything can happen. Some parts of the poem seem not to fit like the use of "think" in the 5th line, but seems to fit in this dream like poem.