a balloon

 

Did I lose something?

She stopped and looked at her palm then around and up above her head.

The balloon…

She had been holding a balloon. It was so light that she had forgotten about it. Only when it was gone, she remembered. The weight of it. How it bobbed in the air. She had been too busy, too preoccupied to pay attention, to appreciate.

Her hand felt empty, her mind adrift, her heart ached. She missed it so.

She looked everywhere, retracing the path she had come, searching and scouring, but never found the lost balloon.

She looked elsewhere, venturing out to new places, acquiring new balloons, but none stayed long.

Some were large, and knocked her over and took off. Several, she held on so tight that she was almost strangled and had to let go. Quite a few drooped in the air and ended up deflating. A handful, she popped and destroyed. Others bounced away as soon as her finger touched. Most of them slipped in when she was not pursuing and out with a gust of wind, leaving only a pang of regret.

In her autumn years, the balloons from the past started to appear. One by one. Sometimes in a group. Different colors, different sizes, and different shapes. One of them approached her quietly. It was the balloon that she had lost decades ago. The one that had given her the sense of aloneness, grief, and heartache. She reached for it but could not touch it. It was a mere illusion, the gossamer of a memory.

They all were.