We made art. We wept. For no reason. There were tidal patterns in our souls that we could not understand. We had souls, we suspected. We knew very little. We saw colors and we named them. We burned things, yes. We burned everything. We took it all and we used it and we did not feel bad. We turned off the television. We cupped small lifeforms in our hands. It grew warmer. We looked for mushrooms in the dirt. We hosted dinner parties. We drank til we were sad. We never learned. We learned to forgive ourselves and continue. We held the door for a stranger. We were all just babies once. We were all so anxious. We invented occasions to feel warm and generous and sorry. We let the stains set. We put off the important things. We made love. We said love but didn’t mean it. We meant to say it more. We regretted everything and nothing. We were hard, then so soft we couldn’t bear it. We made dramas of our suffering. We could not get out of bed. We humiliated each other. We used our hurt in hurtful ways. We embraced. When it rained, words came to us, and we sat alone and wrote them down. We sang, and the singing broke our hearts, made us kind again, made us better listeners. We were terrible listeners. We were terribly selfish. We built cathedrals and would not let each other in. We were boring. We grew bored. But sometimes we stopped as a bird swooped, plunged its body through the water, reemerged, soared away. We knew to watch. We knew it to be beautiful. We knew.
Kelsi Lindus is a writer and documentary filmmaker living in the Puget Sound. Her work has appeared in or is forthcoming from Autofocus, X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine, Cloves Literary, and elsewhere. She can be found online at @kelsijayne or kelsilindus.com.
Lost Balloon 