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The Red Balloon
They liked each other so much that they were
scared to touch each other. Two rabbits on a Queen mattress, awake all through the night: his soft whiskers, her worried eyes. How quickly apartness becomes old hat. A habit that’s lost its lovely spark for blowing itself up and bringing her back. He breathes until the mouthpiece goes blue. For him, her chin went scratch, scratch, let me in! for him she went vegetarian. With no words they exchange new vows. Their anniversary is June, but he’ll say he doesn’t remember and not her birthday either, and not her mother’s. Their space gets more daring by the day (November, July) it floated outside his window yesterday when he was trying to study and it tugged along all the way to the library bright and mute as the balloon on a string in The Red Balloon by Albert Lamorisse – one of those movies you walk into knowing nothing about and now it is a poem, they can’t ever walk out.
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