Balloon

Being a writer, stories stacking up on your mind slowly. Dripping with
creativity. But piling so quickly the words get clogged on the way
out.

Knowing you’ll never be on the cover of the Readers Digest or Time Magazine.

Being a photographer, eating yourself inside out for the right color
balance. Burning the tips of your fingers off just to develop that one
perfect print.

Knowing you’ll never be on the cover of National Geographic.

Being a person, scratching daily at your biggest insecurities.
Examining yourself on that big mirror, mirror on the wall.

Knowing you’ll never be on the cover of Seventeen or Vanity Fair.

Feeling like a balloon

It hurts to be red. Or yellow. Or blue.

Because the truth is, you’ll never have a special shape and you’ll never be filled with pure helium or made out of that pretty shiny plastic that says messages or plays happy birthdays.

No. You’re that kind of balloon you find at a carnival.

Rubber. Latex.

You’re the kind of balloon that is bent into fucking shapes and sold
by some lowlife in a clown costume.

Kids don’t think about the certain balloon they get.

You’re just another rubber balloon after discarding the last because it simply wasn’t good enough.

Doomed to a few days of being cramped into the roof of some school gymnasium

Doomed to a few days of being tied to a mailbox after the big party

Doomed to a few days of whatever before you get popped. Or just die out.

Then you just lay there, limp, until someone feels sorry enough

to throw you into the trash-

Where you lay until your vision is blurred over by coffee grounds and
banana peels

And you just close your eyes because it’s not fucking worth it

There’s nothing you can do about it.

And nobody is going to pull you out of the trash and give you a hug.

You’re deflated and you’ll never be one of those balloons with the plastic sticks

Nope, you’ve just got ribbons that cut off the
circulation to the poor kids’ wrists.

No voice. I am not a snowflake.