Broadside Contest Entrant #5: J MARTIN STRANGEWEATHER

Repurposed Love

It’s simply called The Toy Ball.

A ball made from castoff baby dolls and teddy bears,

currently measuring over eight hundred feet in diameter,

painted uniformly white.

…like ghosts

     …like faded memories

          …haunting, and inescapable.

 

It took form in Manhattan, in the middle of Times Square.

No one knows who started it,

but it’s been funded by the New York City Council

for the past ten years,

ever since the pandemic of 2112.

 

Over a million children died that year,

and that’s just in the U.S.

 

Nowadays,

rather than throw away a doll

or stuffed animal that’s been outgrown

or become ratty,

people from all over the country

donate their toys to The Ball Fund,

giving the toys a new life…

an afterlife.

 

The Toy Ball grows larger every year.

Every Winter Solstice, the toys that

have been donated throughout the year

are affixed to the artwork

and the whole thing gets a new coat of

weatherproof white paint. 

 

People come year-round

to marvel at the ghostly colossus,

many of them trying to find their forfeited childhood

buried within the multitude of repurposed love.

Childhood memories piled high as a skyscraper,

toys dominate the Manhattan skyline

and blot out the sun.