Ping Pong

I'm catching ping pong balls all day and throwing them back with check marks and teardrops on them, both going unnoticed when a little stone [a boulder] hurtles in from the unknown and, shredding through the waistband of my stupid skirt and tights, manages to scrape the base of my lungs and leave a gasping crater the size of a young man's fiery cranium in the middle of me. Where my intestines used to be, I could say, but that's not the worst of it: I am reduced to pulmonary ash on the very week that I'm scheduled to give blood.