A used-to-be-bright-yellow kite climbed inside the branches of my backyard tree, 

clung like a child to its mother, and waited for me to see. 

It waited and watched while I waited and wondered why my eyelids were suddenly so heavy and my pants getting harder to pull up over my belly and, if this were really it, was I even ready?

For six weeks and one day that yellow kite waited in my tree.

I thought I saw some flickers of yellow tucked in between the green, 

but dust and dog breath smudged across my back window made it hard to really see, 

and I was too tired to clean. 

After eleven weeks and six days, I could see it plainly. 

The tree was bare, and the air thin, and I was rising before the sun again.

I watched the pale pink promise of a new day float up over my back fence, settle into the treetops, kiss the wildflowers sprouting in the dirt, and then slowly begin digging into the weeds.

And there it was: a yellow kite, fading in the arms of a tree it took me years to love, refusing to leave.

I thought of the stubborn and stiff upper-lipped little girl I once was and remembered my dad’s sandpaper fingers wrapped around mine, flying our own yellow kites in the park, and I wished I could be that little again.

I stared up at the kite in my backyard tree like trying to place a familiar face and realized it needed help to get out. 

I tugged at its goldenrod and bow tied cord twisting in the wind, but it stuck.

I spread myself wide open so it could free fall into my chest, land safely in this world as it slipped into the next.

I called it by name, and hoped it might fly off on its own

Even when the rain began to fall, it stayed. 

Not moving or breathing or growing anymore, that dumb yellow kite held onto my branches, clung to its roots.

Someone else will have to reach up and get it out.