Up

We built the house from stubbed toes and stitched-up plans,
laughing in that brittle way people do
when the splinters don’t come out clean.

We built a life like a fence patched with bottlecaps and baling wire,
a home that leaned toward the street, grinning lopsided at the rain.

I loved her the way hail loves roofs:
beating, frantic, faithful.
She loved me the way brick loves ivy:
allowing, not reaching.

She moved through each room
like someone hunting for something she forgot,
checking the same drawer twice,
never angry, just never finding it.

We saved cash in old envelopes,
yellowed muted at the corners like dog ears.
She scribbled trip names on them –
names that sounded better in her mouth than in mine.

The kitchen clock ticked like a thumb against a matchbox,
waiting for a spark.
It never came.

Years turned into walls.
Mice nibbled the insulation.
I patched the ceiling with the Sunday comics,
Superman sagging in the corner above the stove.

The doctor’s office smelled of linoleum and wilted carnations.
When they spoke, her mouth moved, but I could only hear the coins
clinking in the jar back home,
settling lower.

So I bought the balloons,
one by one, while she slept –
gas station after gas station,
tires bald, receipts blooming like weeds in the glovebox.

When she got sick, the days thinned out like soup left too long on the stove.
More balloons came from dollar stores and school fairs,
filling the attic with a quivering, pastel cough of color.
Each one a gulp of the future I thought we could still bribe.

When the day came,
I set her thin gold band by her coffee mug,
smudged from years of lip balm and forgotten conversations.

I said, “It’s ready.”

She opened the door.
She touched the frame with a hand that weighed almost nothing.

She looked up.
Balloons bobbing and bustling –
plain ones, long ones, skinny ones,
silvery ones that lasted forever in the corner after a birthday party.

I saw her eyes.

It was not pity,
or sadness,
or the dull insistence,
or self-loathing that animated me.

It was love.
It was love that set the ladder against the gutter.
It was love that cracked the tiles as I padded across them.
It was love that reached for the penknife in my pocket.
It was love that cut the cords and tethers.
It was love that brought them to her and offered one last bouquet.

It wasn’t malice,
or anger,
or sin,
or recklessness that animated her.

There was kindness in her eyes.
Compassion.
Humanity.
Gratefulness.
A familiar the dull insistence.

She took the bundle,
strings slick with sweat,
my fingers clumsy, like a boy giving flowers he picked too soon.

She smiled the smile she used to save for windows she couldn’t open.

And then she floated up –
not the house, not the dream of it –
just her,
barefoot and quiet as laundry on a line.

I didn’t chase.
I didn’t call her name.

I stood in the empty yard,
palm still raised, empty,
feeling the yank of her absence all the way to my shoulder,
and whispered:

I love you.

The house sagged back down like a tired old dog,
and I went inside to sweep the floor.