Madeleine Atwater

Everything was Blue at Your Burial

Your casket was baby blue, your favorite color.  The sky was brighter blue than I had ever seen.  We gathered around your body in that blue casket that held your blue eyes closed forever, clutching blue balloons bobbing on pieces of blue string.  We listened to a country song- at the end we were to open our fists, let the blue balloons float up up up and away until they became parts of the sky, like raindrops into the ocean.  I held that string so tight, with both hands.  The music was full of your spirit, those balloons puffed up with it.  I watched the balloons float high and higher when the song ended, squinting against the sun until they were invisible.  They were there, far away in the blue sky those blue balloons were, and I could not see or touch them anymore.  I fought the urge to jump up and grab at the sky.  Those balloons were gone forever and there is nothing