My heart goes like a fat bird.
I want you to find me.
My body curves limply
like someone falling through air
but I am caught and cradled,
rolled inside a metal ball.
I am the little breathing pupil
in a mechanical eye.
The ocean moves in my ear
like when mom showed me
how seashells have an ocean in them.
It is like winter here and everything
is white, the white so big it dazes you.
I am nobody if you can’t see me.
I float in white air with no face,
just breaths coming and going,
until you find me and your voice
makes the cold metal tremble.
[Atlanta native Flannery is a rising senior at Georgia State University.]
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