Ballusional
Adam Stoves
Let me tell you the most noteworthy love story I’ve ever had fortune to set in motion.
Samuel was damaged. It was obvious. He had once been a gorgeous foil curiosity. It was terribly obvious. His radiant yellow face was persistently positive in spite of his scratches, a smear of blood on his grin, and most wretched of all, and too usual for the state of balloons who seek out my help, peppered with punctures, flat from those holes. Still he pressed on. A polite Southern woman would have said something like Bless his heart had she seen him like that. I’ve wept a measure for dear Samuel.
Samuel came to me in the West. He’d lived homeless, curbside, for months and to this day has never told me from where he first flew. The desert sun did little to heal or harm his figure, but that kind of abandonment is taxing on the spirit and more painful than sunburn. What horror did poor Samuel combat that left him street bound and nearly stabbed to death? Probably better that I will never know.
Samuel had emotions, but his feelings were a knot in a tangle of a petrified mess formed over a lifetime of turmoil. That man, sorry, that balloon was a tough nut to crack even for an expert in Psychoanalysis of Decorative Components and Festivity Favors such as myself. I’m certified. He was hard to get to know, but near impossible to forget. In short, Samuel had mommy issues. He wanted a mommy.
I have a flesh and bone mother, but she is a phony. She bore me, she says, but I fail to believe it. Well maybe I do, maybe I don’t. What’s essential is that my right proper mother is Mother: a floating Mother’s Day wonder of shimmering boldness. My Mother is dusty and grayed with age, though she’s always been silvered. She has prominent wrinkles and her mauve accented look has started to wear to a barely legible state, still she is vibrant as ever. Time has whittled away her long flowing string to a faded green pigtail, but she shows it with pride. I don’t remember a time before Mother. I do know that she used to be flat in my younger years. She, an unfortunate victim of gravity, had been in the past shrunk and collapsed. Mother is healthy now. It took years, but it’s all because she found her Samuel that she is restored. Well, I found her Samuel for her.
ADAM STOVES writes in Brooklyn, NY.
:: ABOUT :: ISSUES :: SUBMISSIONS :: NEWS ::
| Brenda Anderson :: | The Fimble Wind |
| Evelyn Hampton :: | Hi |
| Savior | |
| Start With Steak | |
| Helen Vitoria :: | White |
| Adam Stoves :: | Ballusional |
| Rose Hunter :: | [taxi] |
| Gary Every :: | Popes on Bicycles |
| Bethany Haug :: | Love in the Park |
| Danielle Lea Buchanan :: | Spawn |
| Lewis Gesner :: | Black Ball |
| David Tomaloff :: | Five Photographs |
| Danica Obradovic :: | The Shortest Ceremony |
| Syllabic Debacle | |
| Mark Walters :: | Caveboy 1 & 2 |
| Larissa Nash :: | The Star |
| Unreal | |
| Jenny McDougal :: | For the Monkey Astronauts of America in the 1950s |
| Adler Planetarium on a Weekend | |
| James Valvis :: | Poem Composed Entirely With Last Lines from James Dickey Poems 1 & 2 |
| T.J. O'Donnell :: | Morning Shift |
| Handmade in Alaska | |
| Emily Glossner Johnson :: | Vladimir Lenin Grown Weary |
| Meg Eden :: | An Old Man Sighted, Planting Poinsettias |
Homage to the Strange Spirits
| Kenneth Patchen :: | Picture Poems |