Cloud watching. Meaningless shapes turn into life forms of peacocks and squirrels or castles and dragons. Although I know it’s not really there, there’s a sort of serenity in simply existing and seeing the world through a child’s eyes once more.
Once the sky begins to dim into twilight; I’ll head home and fill my sketchbook, fraying at the edges, with what the sky had told me. It’s our secret. Worlds that lay past my grasp but within sight to only me.
And the colors; fiery reds, Periwinkle blues, hues of orange scattered across Lavender skies. As if someone had taken a brush carelessly across the canvas; splattering paint every which way. But there were no worries of perfectionism, for if the clouds were wholly geometrical there would be no place left for imagination.
As the hours pass and my mind wanders I can’t help but feel as if I am floating amongst them, but the streetlights soon dim around me and I hear my mothers voice call for me and once more I am torn back. It never gets easier.
The clouds whisper and the wind whips around me, pulling me back- pleading with me to stay. I make a silent promise to return. And so I do, leaping from my windowsill down to the ground once the world has fallen silent. My heart racing, keeping hand over my mouth. Elation overcomes me as I throw caution to the wind, running as the clouds cry for me and the wind calls my name. Reaching the park, I sit upon the familiar swing. Kicking of the torn-up ground.
Higher and higher I go and all I can see is the endless sky reaching out to embrace me. Clouds now accompanied by shining stars. The moon a faint crescent bouncing light onto the corner of Indigo clouds. Higher and higher- I am sure that if I let go I would join the night. Perhaps as a knight fighting bravely against a fearsome dragon or as a maiden running through fields of yellowing grass.
Slowly my fingers unwind from the swings cord. First the pointer, lastly the thumb. I am the Skies, the turbulent Clouds. I am the Stars twinkling with glee. I am the Moon knowing of all that remains unsaid.