Used Balloons

 

I could not stop the boy from running home with the treasure he had found half-buried in the dirt on the street, gooey and translucent like a jellyfish washed up on the beach: another used condom cast off by the side of the road. Putting it to his lips, he inflated it into a balloon until he was intercepted by the missionary man, who took away his toy and began yelling at him about disease and AIDS. The boy didn’t understand. As he ran back to find another, I wept, knowing there were plenty more balloons where that came from.

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First Published by Five Minutes Lit, Susanna Baird, editor.