Poetry: The Lost Balloon by Eli S. Evans

The Lost Balloon

They had nine children,

all of them named George

except for one,

who they named Georgina because

from the moment she was born

one could see she would grow up

to become a great beauty,

and Georgina struck them as

a better name than George

for a great beauty.

 

In fact, Georgina grew up

to be more of what one might call

“a good-looking woman,”

and she also grew up to be

an emergency room nurse,

which was how she came to meet

Dan.

 

Dan came into the emergency room

one Tuesday shortly before midnight

suffering from a bout of kidney stones.

 

Ahh! he was screaming when

he careened through the sliding glass doors.

I’m burning up inside! Save me or kill me

but for the love of God, do it now!

The attending physician put him on

a morphine drip and left

Georgina in charge.

 

Soon enough the drugs had taken their effect.

 

I was really losing it there for a minute,

Dan conceded.

 

It’s pretty typical of kidney stones, Georgina replied.

 

Speaking of women, said Dan,

although no one had been,

you’re a pretty good-looking one yourself,

and now that we’ve gotten to know

each other a little, I was

hoping to invite you to my place

for a supper of pasta and seltzer water,

and who knows what might 

then transpire.

 

Seeing as she was between boyfriends at the time,

Georgina accepted the invitation,

marking down the date in the agenda

she always kept, just in case, in the

front pocket of her lab coat.

 

…

 

On the night of the dinner

Dan, having still not passed hist stone,

ate and drank sparingly.

 

I’m taking a medication to

relax the muscles in the bladder and

the prostate, he said,

and one of its side effects

is to suppress the appetite. Furthermore,

my lower abdomen and groin are in

excruciating pain, which is not very motivational

as far as eating and drinking are concerned.

By contrast, Georgina could not get enough,

neither of the pasta nor of the seltzer water.

 

She ate and drank and ate and drank,

and being that both pasta and seltzer water

cause bloating, albeit via different mechanisms,

the more she ate and the more

she drank, the more bloated she became,

until at last she became so bloated

she just floated away like a lost balloon

 

drifting toward some distant star.

Eli S. Evans has recent work in Sublunary Review, Maudlin House, Cowboy Jamboree, (mic)ro(mac) (RIP), Queen Mob's Teahouse (RIP), MacQueen's Quinterly, A Thin Slice of Anxiety, Bear Creek Gazette, Expat, and Berfrois (RIP), among others. A small book of small stories, Obscure & Irregular, was published in 2021, and a larger book of smaller stories is forthcoming in 2023, hopefully in time for National No Pants Day on May 1st.