Daily Poem 13/30

Guy twisting balloons at the twin's party
line of kids in front of him never gets shorter
a little girl asks for a rainbow
"I LOVE making rainbows!"
he exclaims
and soon she has a tricolor rainbow
emerging from a cloud.
Our baby,
while getting her diaper changed, says,
"Purple"
when I ask her what kind of animal she wants.
"Purple is good,"
but what, I ask, is purple?
A bunny? A dog? A turtle?
"Yeah," she says noncommitally.
When the big kids go inside for a pinata kill session,
the guy cheerfully gets to work on her purple turtle.
First he makes a face at the end of a long straight balloon.
Then he makes neat little rows for a shell, purple on top, blue on bottom.
Next, toddler loses interest and she and I go into the bouncy house.
Time passes.
My husband opens another beer.
But the guy keeps twisting.
Sometimes he has to deliberately pop balloons. Other times they just seem to pop.
I watch from inside the bouncy house,
the loose black netting obscuring the result in his ever-moving hands.
Kids come back from the pinata
with bags of candy.
They start lining up again in front the balloon twister.
He keeps twisting.
Finally, it's done. We emerge from the bouncy house to a celebratory purple turtle, triumphantly presented.
She shrieks with delight.
It's beautiful, but I wonder if people will know what it is.
"oh wow," says a woman,
as we carry our balloon animal home.
"a turtle!"