Frozen air

He had been sitting in his room for too long, his thoughts and dreams hanging silently around him like balloons, some growing soft under the weight of the stillness and drooping in midair like overripe fruit, some already shrunken and shrivelled on the floor, when a sudden breeze pushed open the windows and batted at his kingdom of frozen air, releasing at once the turbidity of his life in a liberating rush that sent the balloons dancing across the room and out from the window, upward and outward at the invitation of the sky, a constellation of colour that vanished at last into the expanse of glowing blue, the disappearance of dreams looking for their own dimensions.