The Man Selling Black Balloons

No one remembers the first time he came.
Or perhaps, they only remember after.

A shape at the edge of the street,
standing where the streetlights flicker.
A man, if man is the word—
his face a wet smear in the fog,
his suit darker than the night itself,
tailored from something too still to be fabric.

In his hands, the strings—
thin, trembling veins
that stretch upward,
vanishing into ink-dark orbs,
swollen, pulsing, breathing.

He does not speak.
He does not call out.
And yet, the children go to him.

One by one, small hands take the strings.
One by one, small hands let go.
The wind does not take them.
The wind does not touch them.
They rise.
They rise.
They rise.

Some say they have seen the faces,
drifting beneath the black sheen—
not reflections, no, not echoes,
but something looking back.

Others say they hear the laughter,
thin and distant,
as if carried from another world,
as if coming from nowhere at all.

And some—only a few—
say they have seen the man
turn, ever so slightly,
as if looking at them directly,
though his face never moves.

It is then that they understand.
It is then that they shut their windows.
It is then that they whisper:

"He does not sell them. He gives them away."

But no one ever speaks of what is taken.