Baby
She takes a balloon from the living room
Gives it a name
Calls it baby
Brings it to the table.
The vent blows it, it rocks and tumbles and doesn’t stay still despite her will to keep her baby “in place”
I remember yesterday, or maybe it was last year… or…
Was it two?
Three?
Four?
I used to have babies
That would dart across this floor that I sit on now to eat because the table only holds two and sometimes a balloon.
The window leaks, it’s January
But we’ve been through heat
And many afternoons of sweaty arms rolling into wrists and fumbling fingers
And many occasions with many balloons
But this ones name is baby
And it’s still round
And it still wiggles in the warm.
Memories work like that, finding the mundane and putting life there.
Building stories into frames
Time into form.