Ballasting

In four movements

Ways we weigh ourselves (down).

A detail from The first terrace of Purgatory by Joseph Anton Koch (c.1825). Public Domain.

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I. Judgment

Curriculum vitae: the course of life.
Bring your résumé, a summary of highlights
in A4 and triplicate
up to heaven’s gates
where angels weigh your heart on their scales.
You're overqualified, they’re afraid, 
and flush you down the drain.
You awake to the dinging of alarm bells. 


II. Paralysis

I see you’ve filled your plate
with every dish at the buffet
But you’ve taken just one bite out of everything. 
Are you satisfied?
Not yet. 
You want to taste it all
before you commit. 
You want me to guard your table
while you search for something else?
Sure, I’ll wait.


III. Chaos

Sip cherry cola in bed,
turn on the desk fan, set it on high
to drown the ringing inside your head.
You’ve resolved to go clean.
Summon boredom's beasts to clear the dopamine. 
Only these white walls for company,
and three whole days without technology. 
But your brain rattles its cranial cage,
flaps its wings under your eyelids,
foams in rabid tongues,
thrashing your spine from side to side.
I’m not made for stillness, it cries, 
and bays for the light of a screen. 
The hairs on your arm stand upright. 
It’s a full moon tonight. 


IV. Gravity

Credit cards strewn all over the road,
all mine, past expiry.
The crook who picked my pocket, long gone.
leaving behind my wallet, empty. 
Nothing inside was worth all that trouble. 
So why do I carry this load on my hips?
It's not easy to walk this earth 
without the comfort of gravity.  
I steal magazines from the dollar store rack,
stuff them into my backpack.
They weigh me down nicely. 

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©Apra Gotla 2025.