(Un-numbered)

A Dandelion’s Dream

written by Mathias Svalina with Ari Shapley

I have dried to a white globe of seedpods. The wind blows & lifts the fluff of me from my stem. My seedpods rise into the air & disperse. As they disperse, I feel both expanded & reduced—I am all at once all the seeds riding the wind, & I am each seed unto itself. One of my seeds rises higher & higher into the air, where the atmosphere thins & am in the the darkness of space. The distant stars are so precise. In the space between what the Earth can hold & what the Earth cannot hold, I spread out, undoing, undone, expanding from a seed into a cloud. The moisture weighs me down, lowers me back into gravity’s grip, back into the comforts of the sky. I drift down toward the surface of the Earth, growing smaller & tighter as I descend, until I have become a balloon, bouncing once again on the wind. I bounce about until I feel something calling to me, tugging me through the wind, until I are drawn over the rusted chain-link fence of a small back yard, where four children sit in the grass with a single yellow balloon lying on the grass between them. It is one child’s birthday. This is that child’s birthday party. There’s no cake, no presents, just that single balloon. It was that balloon that beckoned me here, called to me for help. As I float down to the children, they look up, delighted by the sudden appearance of a new balloon. I land on the yellow balloon & burst, showering skittles & tiny toys & shiny gifts over the four children. The children leap up & fill their hands with candy & toys & dance, & as they dance they kick the white dandelion globes that fill the grass, filling the air with floating seedpods.