Return to Archive Pieces by Rachel P (see note at bottom) I am a red balloon, a balloon tied to an anchor. Dancing by herself, waiting for a star to fall, someone to change her life. Here there is too much sadness, not enough sky. Do you wish your feet would one day keep walking, move about on the hem of life, making your own patchwork quilt of reality? Dreams can be such dangerous things, sometimes consuming us completely. Variation from the accepted norm, she flailed her arms like a bird in a futile effort to fly. Beating the air, she could not reach-could not even see- the world was changing. She stripped her mind, bound it, roped, blunted, drugged it, ending in disillusion. A suicidal course If the glory can be killed, we are lost. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes . I have begun my own quiet war. I have to choose sides, release from my anchor. The whole world is over the fence. Note: Poem was composed from random fragments of quotes from: Ishmael, East of Eden, Memoirs of Geisha, Rain of Gold, House on Mango Street, Miriam’s Song and the Bluest Eye.