Finer Lines In Between

We sat on the ledge of the round balcony a dozen stories above the street.
You removed your hair ties and let your braids loosen as the night breeze swept around us.

You gripped the handle of the red ping pong paddle and insisted I call it “table tennis.”  
You’d won your match that afternoon, the last one for many moons.

Maybe this time your father will let you try a winter sport like skiing or something on the water like rowing.  

Just one more year, then freedom.
Freedom from the pressure of competitive physics wrangling.

Because you never liked table tennis, did you?

You laughed and turned to look at me.  I asked you what’s so funny.
You looked down below at the shiny Cadillac convertibles parallel-parked like sardines
and dropped the red paddle that won you regionals.

Who says there has to be another title? 
Why wait another year?
Freedom is now
on the ledge of this round balcony.

— yiqi 14 December 2025 1:25 am

~!~

I had a conversation with someone the other night and haven’t been able to stop thinking about them.  The image of sitting on a balcony and looking down at some vista below came to me yesterday, but I was too tired to write anything.  And then while watching Cash on Demand (Quentin Lawrence, 1961) on TCM, this prose-poem came to me.  I can’t actually picture this person playing ping pong, but for some reason, that’s the sport that made it into the verse.