The Apartment and the Balloon

(to be read aloud)

I shivered, my legs locked, knees braced.

I had my arms held out in front of me raised to the sky then in a blur, everything opened up and she spoke; she said: “Do you love me?”.

I’ve never felt the way that yellow transforms into red before, but in that moment, my legs locked and my knees braced and my blood ran cold. And I only stared at her eyes. To this day, I remember how it took me forever to open my mouth, and how I replied “I never liked these things.”

To this day, I remember the way that they clamoured and begged like they were homeless, living on the streets with one road pleasure and the opposite memory. I remember the way they said they loved me and asked for a place in my heart and I shook my head and I tried to say no. I remember the way my heart still chose to open up, cracking and tearing as rocks do, like a heart of stone jagged at the edges and split open the way that valleys form.

I told them no.

But in the apartment of my heart, they still set up store and they booked rooms like I was renting a hotel of affection, one by one coming and going, flitting in and out like night-flies drawn to the light I knew I was trying to hold on to.

I looked out the window every day and I always saw a balloon the deepest tone of red, far away in the distance. I saw it soar and soar beyond the expanse of the pinkish sunset sky of my heart and I watched it reach with its maroon hand extending and stretching towards some vague hand of cotton candy.

The one whose breath blew it higher, whose breeze drew it closer to paradise.

Back to earth, and the apartment is a mess, I thought I knew better. I did. I should have known that in a cluttered living room, I lose too many of the things I once held precious, that couches become less comfy when everyone sits on them, that toothbrushes can’t be shared and that the toilet needs to be cleaned. I stare at the king-sized bed now left without a space for me.

I lock myself in the only room I still have to myself, the quiet place, the secret place and I cry and I cry and I look up at the weeping evening sky, only to realise that maybe - poverty isn’t just the state of my bank account or the condition of my mind but the emptiness of the roommates I opened my broken heart to.

One came in the shape of fire, fuel in sticks, burning bottom up, butt thrown to the floor. One in the shape of water but intoxicated with bubbles of liquid happiness and false escape, and another in only the shape of a spectre resting itself upon my shoulders, assuring me that it will never let go. Sometimes it laughs, and I laugh with it.

I thought I was being kind, I thought my heart could take it.

I thought I still had space.

Winter hits.

I look out the frosted glass of my window and I see the balloon again. It’s in the clouds now, it flutters and flits with the purity of white marshmallow air upon the sea and deep down, I knew I was red like that balloon.

And in a second the balloon stands still, a second that feels like it was created so that we could understand the weight of forever.

Another second goes.

And in the third the balloon finally shakes, exhales and inhales, breathes its last and shoots up and disappears among the blue and the white, its trail leaving behind marks of red grace and traces of impossible snow the colour of wine. To this day, that scene still shakes me, but I still don’t know if the balloon popped or if some invisible hand drew it up above the borders of my human heart - if some first Love reached for the balloon of my soul and pulled it to themselves, gasping and heaving as it went.

Now, I only know that my roommates are gone, out the door, and to this day I still look out the window for that balloon. My roommates stare back. I don’t see them anymore. I look up searching for red, and I start. The sun has set but the night is the colour of blood.