Associate Poetry Editor Nicolette Visciano on today’s poem: When the definition of growth is stripped away, what becomes possible? Lenna Mendoza explores what is left to wither and what is left to thrive between childhood and adulthood through the lens of a boy, floating away in his own way. Inspired by the true story of a newsworthy moment in a singular boy’s life in 2009, Mendoza transcends the details of this story from its external retelling to its internal landscape, even more infinite and boundless than the sky. Mendoza captures readers with each stanza, taking us away to float within this narrative, no matter where our feet may stand on the ground or how tall we have grown since the last time we dared to touch—or dream of—a flying machine.

boy floats away in balloon

“[H]e was found, hiding in a box in his family’s garage attic, fearful his father would be angry at him for touching the flying machine.”
- The New York Times, Oct 15, 2009

I rose
through the diagram,
called the clouds

by name, corralled them
in my arms, turned
their spun sugar to rain.

Up here, my name is
unspoken, but known
in float and sway:

Falcon, without prey.
I’ve become a second sun
to swallows and you all.

Dad’s search for truth
always started in the stars,
and still he knew so little

about the world above.
What I’ve done he’ll never
again be small enough to do.

I left a life of gazing up
to make myself a place
over kites and under planes,

where the moon glows
a cool goodnight to fields
lined like comic strips, tilled

brown as the cardboard
lid hanging over me,
which I won’t yet lift.

Lenna Mendoza is a poet from Texas. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Foglifter, Salamander, and Four Way Review. She currently lives in Oxford, MS, where she is an MFA candidate at the University of Mississippi. She tweets @lennammendoza

If you would like to show your appreciation for the writer’s work, you can send them a tip through Venmo: @Lenna-Mendoza