I used to play the cloud game in the stucco of my bedroom walls. 

My eyes confined to the few feet surrounding my pillow,

finding hippos and continents before I drifted off to sleep,

always comforted they would be there when I woke.

I’d start the next day carried away
by the dreams I failed to recall.
Chasing thoughts like kites on a string,
blown through the sky by the sharp spring breeze,
tails spinning in the wind.

I don’t have those same walls to look at now,
so I settle for the sky. the clean and clouded sky.
looking for familiar shapes in the silhouettes and shadows
of the crisp, clear clouds
as I watch the sun fall down.


I can no longer see those cartoon shapes,
the way they would stay in just one place.

If you ask me to find them now, 
all I see are nail holes.
this way, I don’t feel like I’ve pinned through the sky.