Flying inside your own body

Flying Inside Your Own Body

Your lungs fill & spread themselves,
wings of pink blood, and your bones
empty themselves and become hollow.
When you breathe in you’ll lift like a balloon
and your heart is light too & huge,
beating with pure joy, pure helium.
The sun’s white winds blow through you,
there’s nothing above you,
you see the earth now as an oval jewel,
radiant & seablue with love.
It’s only in dreams you can do this.
Waking, your heart is a shaken fist,
a fine dust clogs the air you breathe in;
the sun’s a hot copper weight pressing straight
down on the think pink rind of your skull.
It’s always the moment just before gunshot.
You try & try to rise but you cannot.

Margaret Atwood


-In the poem Atwood uses a variety of literary devices to explain the poem. For example, she uses imagery of lungs filling and spreading themselves like “wings of pink blood”. This could be a comparison of what the lungs would look like if a person could look inside his or her own body. The wings are a symbol of freedom. Atwood insinuates that it is more freeing to fly on the inside than the outside.simile - earth as an oval jewel; you like a balloon;
metaphor - heart a shaken fist; sun's a hot copper weight;
personification -earth - radiant and seablue with love; sun's white winds blow through you; sun - pressing straight down on the think rind of your skull.