Mental Health Week

It is mental health week, and to prove it
at the bottom of my cluttered bag
where a shaggy copy of Szymborska
fends off toothpicks, pen lids and foil-clad painkillers,
are two identical balloons,
yellow and stamped
with smiley faces and unbegun slogans
think well. be well.

Deflated, or yet to be inflated,
however you look at it
they are rubber and mass produced
and they are making my bag smell like a hospital,
so perhaps I will blow one up to a sensible size
and let it go in the wind
after a funeral
or in a playground;
the other, I will blow up until
it reaches that critical point
where people start to notice it
and cover their ears
and look away,
and then I will blow some more -
a comforting thought
in a broken kind of way.