A balloon boy.

Go visit this little street,
Squeezed by grey buildings;
It slithers like a worm.
It has muddy puddles
Which reflect your face
In ripples.

There will you see him:
A young boy thinly clad,
A floating cloud dancing above his head
Attached to strings.
He sells red hearts to lovers and their child
For a few coins.

He sells them to strangers,
Who burst them open
To reveal a nothingness.
And at times, a stranger's grip is loose.
Then they drift up and far away,
Searching.

They walk away into the grey -
The lovers and their child - happy now
With the purchase of an inflated rubber balloon!
Such was their want of a heart!
The giggles get stifled by the dark,
When suddenly, it breaks, with a loud burst!

When he presses his gaze
Into a restaurant,
Saliva leaks like a faulty tin roof.
The man in uniform,
With dirty words, chases him away.
He and the balloons dance to their rhythm.

If you ask him,
Of his dreams,
They are ridiculous!
You'd look at him with such disbelief.
Why you'd break his heart
With your laugh.

At night a man hurries through the lane;
Another sits here, another there.
They all have daggers, to stab you open.
The buildings shut their yellow eyes
And turn away.
They'd rather avoid the scene.

And yet he sits there till late,
With his red hearts,
Vulnerable to those steely lusts.
For he too desires
In that sameness, that is theirs and his.
After all, he has hearts to give away.

Will you stay on then?
To witness, a spectacle, so...so strange;
To see those strings get cut in a dance of blades,
To see the balloons drift up to reach the moon,
Spread like stars across a secret night;
Those same balloons filled with air.