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The Yellow Balloon

by Kate Hurley  
6/23/2015 / Poetry

The kind of laugh that makes you

Look up for a moment

And remember there is sky there.

With hope falling on every syllable, she said

"this

is

for

you."

She reached her hand towards me

Holding the string of a

Yellow balloon.

I hesitated

And the moment was heavy

With a hundred questions

I used to laugh like that

But somewhere along the way I realized

That beauty came with pain

And so I chose a life that was somewhere between

Pain and beautiful

A life that was very comfortable

But very alone

A life

Without grief

But also without reverie.

This gift that she offered me

This gift of the yellow balloon

It wasn't in-between.

It was beautiful

I had forgotten what beautiful looked like

So I hesitated

And this little girl, didn't she understand

How different the worlds we came from?

Her life filled with

Food stamps and trailer parks

Mine filled with

Screens and fences

Her people trying to forgive

Their hundreds of years in chains

My people trying to understand

How we could ever do anything so cruel

Shouldn't I be the one giving something to her?

And so I hesitated

And that little girl, if she could see

What was inside of me

She wouldn't want to give me that yellow balloon

Despite my neat house and my

Church every Sunday

I am very scared

Like a little girl with butterfly barrettes.

I live with thoughts dark and sad

And I wonder if anyone would love me

If they really knew me.

I didn't deserve this gift.

And so I hesitated.

Finally, I bent down with tears in my eyes and said

"Honey, I don't think I should take this ballon away from you. "

"But I want to give it to you" she said back.

She blinked

"I have an idea.Let's hold on to it together, and then we can let it go!"

I put my hand over hers.

"1.2..3!"

We opened our hands

And our shackles fell

In that moment I felt it again:

Grief and reverie

But this time I wanted them both.

I wanted all of it.

Together we watched the balloon floating in the distance

Sunlight falling on us like baptism

Like reckless mercy

Like relentless love

I looked down at the girl,

Our hands still intertwined

And I realized that

Despite all of our differences

In that moment we were just two wayward children

That had seen a glimpse of home.

Kate Hurley is a writer, worship leader, and teacher. She writes the popular blog The Sexy Celibate and wrote a book called Cupid is a Procrastinator: Making Sense of the Unexpected Single Life. The mission statement of her life is "To paint an accurate picture of a passionate God."

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