Slow Helium Leak

Balloons have their own atmospheres
By which they’re trying to float free.
Words have our own humanity.

To our contained way of thinking,
To be a human is to be
Fantasizing life as feral,

Lighter-than-air synanthropy,
Capable of coasting among
Human communities, but not

Caught in any, anchored to none.
But no word’s escaped yet, and none
Ever will, and that’s exactly

What it is to be human, in
Our peculiar way of thinking.