The Girl with the Red Balloon

I am a word. At worst, a poem. At best, a revolution.

You say you’ll always be there But the last person who said that left me stranded in the middle of the night. And I know you’re the furthest thing from him But promises make me nervous They’re like shoes no one can ever quite fill.

As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.

So that’s how we live our lives. No matter how deep and fatal the loss, no matter how important the thing that’s stolen from us—that’s snatched right out of our hands—even if we are left completely changed, with only the outer layer of skin from before, we continue to play out our lives this way, in silence. We draw ever nearer to the end of our allotted span of time, bidding it farewell as it trails off behind. Repeating, often adroitly, the endless deeds of the everyday. Leaving behind a feeling of immeasurable emptiness.

I think, these days, I miss you more when you’re near than when you’re not around at all. I miss you and you are here. Only you aren’t.

We’re so anxious about the future that we don’t remember how very recent the past is.

Memory: “Memory is a way of telling you what’s important to you.