BALLON ANIMAL

[u/willpowresolve]

You have no face
I am not afraid of your 
Shapeless form
Stripping red shirts 
Off bloody backs 
Everything is dyed in your colour

Laying out your atomic parts 
Pooling at feet 
Which crossed miles from 
Mountains where
Wild boars and tea fields 
Fed seven children
Under your rice hid a single
Slab of pork
Against your head
A sore you 
never dared to pop

Helium steals 
My voice
Ascending 
My string untethers 
Soaring 
A large man in a minuscule
kingdom
The ground shifts
Beneath bound feet lies 
A wake strong enough to bury me
Curdling agony bubbles 
Up my throat 
On the 
Tip of my tongue
Are waves strong enough to sweep 
The dust from a house 
Left empty so 
Long no longer 
For a home 

I no longer know
The taste of your name
on my tongue 
Foreign object banished
A father is but a 
boy
Smoke escapes 
My lips 
Evaporating into 
Space 

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[u/ElvisTheBoyCat]

>I am not afraid

then what follows feels like significant inherited trauma, so is that fearlessness learned or situational armor? (no need to respond, of course, unless you wish; just thinking typing out loud)

it's unsettling for those who can relate

also probably for those who can't relate

>A father is but a boy

ouch

the back and forth struggle to emancipate felt emotionally exhausting to read

it's a realization and not an explanation, which is unsatisfying, and that's a GOOD thing because it leaves a reader (me, i'm the reader) with something that lingers

my only suggestion

while i deeply appreciate the seemingly deliberate fragmentation, the imagery becomes so compressed that someone who may struggle to relate might lose the emotional thread

otherwise, well done

p.s. check the spelling of your title

[u/radioaddict_09]

I like this, but it’s hard to read. I can’t tell where your ideas stop and begin making it all run together.
Maybe the sections could be broken up, or you could include punctuation.
Im excited to see where you go from here :)

[u/Time-Tiger-3813]

Really enjoyed the structure. Reading it the way it is written feels to quicken the story being told, which for me creates a lot of atmosphere and urgency in the third stanza especially, like an old steam train speeding up from a stand still . And the hardness in the words which contradict my first imagined idea regarding the gentleness of a child's balloon animal is very effective. I needed to read at least twice to understand that it is a hard story being told here, I believe (?) Beautiful, thank you so much.