Lost: One Heart

Despite warnings that it wouldn't be, today was a beautiful Fall day. I woke up early, took Duncan for a walk, watched a bit of each of the two football games going on in the park as we skirted the fields and came home for a nice breakfast of toast and Egyptian licorice tea.

This afternoon as we took our second walk I noticed a peculiar sight. A party was going on at one of the picnic shells and someone had arranged a massive balloon display, shaped like a heart. The wind picked up and the heart flapped wildly several times before it broke free of its moorings, and leapt into the air. Duncan and I paused, watched it gain altitude, break right in half and speed toward the north, right over our apartment. I barely had time to pull out my camera and snap one picture before it vanished over the golf course. What a perfect time, I thought, for someone's heart to be carried away by the wind, set free over the changing trees and the crisping grass. The rest of the hemisphere may be winding down before another dark winter, but that heart knew what it needed and where it needed to go.

There's a song in there somewhere.