love is a hand-hold,

the loose innocence gripping balloon strings.

lighter than air,

“who on Earth could lose their hold over it?”

we say.

until it happens.

until it slips your grip and flies,

for it never wants its tether.

it prefers to join the skies

on its buoyant line forever.

love is evasive.

i watched it join the fleet

of fleeing balloons that dot and soar the skies

imitating shooting stars

as my mother questions,

“how’d that happen?”

momentarily, i believed

i had flooded my brain with the question

and it was leaking into the air.

yeah, I’m an airhead.

i half-crafted an excuse and said

“the wind caught it.”

and she bought it.

and so did i.

“my love left with the breeze.”

god, i loved the way it rolled off the tongue,

rather than getting stuck in my throat

the way the truth does.

when my comet blinked out of sight,

into and past

the open and vast

blue,

all left was a ghost trail,

beginning with remnants

of where its tail rested

so naturally in my fingers

and never ending.

neverending.

neverending,

so the better part of me wants to believe

it is still floating

in the same direction,

the same way

i chose a path

and followed the wind,

searching for a balloon

i misplaced some time ago.

but i am tethered.

so instead, i followed it with my pupils.

i’ve gotten an eye for noticing the lines

that split the skies into two endless voids

and give them a common boundary.

so close, yet so closed

by the traced path of a love

that flies still today,

missing,

cutting lines through other trails

dicing up the sky above us.

because when love leaves,

it leaves in the one direction

we cannot follow it-

up.

so when we keep our heads down,

we are heading backwards.

look

the balloons are soaring through the skies.

let it remind you

to hold on.

Submission by Jaiden  Aquino