What a shitty life. Papa says. And lifts himself, crooked, like the balloons we set free after the celebration. We scrawled messages, crude tattoos on their bodies. Bibi tells me they will reach my mother and brother, orders me to watch carefully else we should lose them in the fog. They don’t visit me in dreams like they do her. You don’t have to kill yourself for your family. Papa once said. They certainly don’t kill themself for you. But our palms still meet in communion, still bleed sweat into one another. I think that Bibi is wrong to watch where the balloons may rise. Rather, I’m more intrigued by how they may fall. I imagine the balloons will reach just above the clouds, where the air is thinner. They will shatter there, suspended, for a moment, at its peak. Once broken, they may plummet, streaking the skies. Or they may float, caught in wind-bursts, gliding gently back towards the boy, his chin tilted, realizing it’s easy to be lost in place—even easier to forget the one that birthed you.
