Finally
“I’ll send a yellow balloon; that’s how you’ll know,” she’d said. That was a million years ago, before all good dreams turned to dust and memory. Now, Hector was just another old man shuffling by, passing long days short on purpose. A truck with a yellow balloon painted on its side drove slowly by him down the street. He gasped. “Finally,” he whispered with a joy and an urgency that almost scared him. “I don’t have the words for how I’ve missed you.”