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.