YOUR BALLOON IN MY PICTURE
Aaron Wilder
As I try to put a frame around this picture of a life
I can’t help but smile and smirk,
because these memories are all I have left of you, dad,
you who never stopped smiling.
My smile in our portrait seems fake and surreal,
while yours is as real as my distance from you.
You stood behind me, so close, yet miles away.
As I wipe away the inch of dust on the glass plate over our family,
I can’t help but have an envious smile,
one of luscious guilt and grief.
It’s too late to redeem you now, though.
Far too late to introduce myself to you for the first time.
Just as impossible to redeem the happiness you once had.
Happiness is a bright red balloon,
one which you carry with you as a child.
When you have children, it’s taken from you and passed on,
but, even in your later times, you clung to that balloon.
You tried your hardest not to let it go.
When it was floating, you were floating with it,
far and away from me.
Yet I was the one careless enough to blow you away,
hiding behind false smiles and laughs.
And a rip in this picture of a life leaves me out,
leaves me behind.
Left with a self-inflicted broken heart
and a heavy conscience drowning me.
In the tattered portrait, through the dirty glass,
I see the father I could have had
now that it’s far too late to redeem you.
