Summer in Lorraine

By Jessica Mehta

Posted on

Hot air balloons can only crash—
it took me fifteen years and five thousand
miles to watch nylon
candies en flambé
fall like parade castoffs
from the sky. In open fields, hands
sticky with crepe drippings, the lot of us
craned our necks and clutched our phones
waiting with hungry impatience
for the cascade of exquisite collisions.

Jessica Mehta