Valentine's Afternoon

Four lanes over, a plump helium heart— slipped, maybe, from some kid's wrist or a rushed lover's empty front seat through a half-cracked car window— rises like a shiny purple cloudlet toward today's gray mess of clouds, trailing its gold ribbon like lightning that will never strike anything or anyone here on the forsaken ground, its bold LOVE increasingly illegible as it ascends over the frozen oaks, riding swift currents toward the horizon, a swollen word wobbling out of sight.