Grief

Hovering above my head, is a balloon . I watch it float. The sky is linen crisp but my pegged heart hangs sodden. They say it will pass, as if your unused plate is just a cloud and not a shattered life.

Believe me, I have have taken apart my memories and tried to put me back together, tried to put you back together, but all I can build is an incomplete that is just, less. I am tired of searching for you. I want to stop searching for you.

Sometimes my imagination reaches for the string of the balloon. I tug it down and hold its full body against my skin. I am strong enough to pop through its tense membrane, to destroy it with blunt fingernails, but I need it because I need you.

You are gone. The balloon stays; a passive watcher of my time without you, a critical presence lingering when there is joy, when there is laughter, when there is new. It is then, in those moments that this sorrow; this held in, puffed up, burst full pain, is the heaviest lightness of all. You are gone.

The balloon pulls me to the ground without ever leaving the space just above my sky stretched hands. I still reach for you and I know if you could, you would reach for me to. You would take my hand and say softly, let me go. Grief is a balloon.