Because there was a poster of a hot air balloon in your room

and because its rainbow stripes enchanted you and perhaps because your mum was up to her elbows in laundry for other people’s kids again, your sister decided to jump into that hot air balloon when it appeared for real—a ball of triumph in the soggy sky. You got close to her face as she hurried your mum’s plum lipstick over her mouth and swiped swimming-pool blue around her eyes. It makes your freckles look way oranger, you said, but she said I don’t care, hot air balloons are made up of every colour and flounced out the backdoor, her clip-on earrings winking, her outfit of lace and ribbons laughing in the ice-block air. And because the days are long in winter, and because there was more adventure in you than a jungle gym, and perhaps because your mum was on the phone again going I am paying soon, really soon, couldn’t you just give me another couple of days? you followed your sister into the garden, even as the mud squelched over your ankle socks, and you climbed after her, even though the tree was dark with rot, and the hot air balloon got so bright, so close, so low above the tree that it was not just a game anymore and you shouted Wait up! and only then realised, once again, that you’d forgotten to ask if there was room enough for two. So you just stayed there, alone in those branches that were just like your own mother’s arms, so thin and so hard from smacking away every blasted gale that ever tried knocking you down.

Zoë Meager

Zoë Meager’s work has been published in Cheap Pop, Ellipsis Zine, Granta, Hue and Cry, Landfall, Lost Balloon, Mascara Literary Review, Mayhem, Meniscus, North & South, Overland, Splonk, and Turbine | Kapohau, among others. She’s a 2024 Sargeson Fellow.