Barry found it on a Wednesday.
He wasn't looking for anything in particular. He rarely is.
He was simply walking in the way that Barry walks — slowly, and with a great deal of attention paid to things that are not considered worth attending to.
The dandelion clock was standing in the path. Most people would have stepped around it. Barry stopped.
He picked it up very carefully, the way you carry something that has decided to be fragile today. He held it for a while first. Just to look at it. The seeds were so precisely arranged. He hadn't known, before this moment, that he needed to know that. And now he did.
He closed his eyes.
Barry's wish was not small. It was not practical. It was the kind of wish that has no edges — the kind you can't quite hold the whole of at once. He didn't mind. He held what he could of it.
Then he blew, very gently.
The seeds went everywhere. Into the trees. Into the light. Into the particular quality of Wednesday afternoon that belongs only to this one and never comes back.
Barry watched them go with great interest and no sadness whatsoever.
He didn't need to know where they landed. They knew.
He walked home humming something he hadn't heard before.
It's Make a Wish Day. Barry would like you to know that you don't have to know the whole wish. Just hold what you can of it. Then let it go.
It knows where to land.
