Member-only story
Micro Monday
Worry Balloons
A young woman sets her worries free
Hannah walked into the gift shop and asked for ten helium balloons.
“All different colours,” she said.
The shopkeeper smiled and tied together a bunch of red, blue, yellow, green, orange, purple, pink, white, silver, and gold.
She carried them to the highest hill overlooking her village. The breeze tugged gently at the strings as if the sky were eager to claim them.
Hannah then uncapped a marker pen.
On the red balloon she wrote: Please don’t let me get angry over things that don’t matter.
On the blue: Take my heartbreak and let it fly away.
On the yellow: Help me find joy again.
On the green: Let my family thrive.
The others carried burdens, regrets, sleepless nights — words she wished she hadn’t spoken and fears she couldn’t explain.
When the last message was written, one by one she let them go — shouting the worry into the wind.
The balloons drifted upward, becoming smaller and smaller until they were nothing more than tiny specks of colour against the pale blue of the sky.
