#c****s

When my Carlos first came to town, a stranger, a scientist, an interloper, the clouds were mostly absent. The blue of the sky seared, it cast unearthly light on our earthly town. But still they lingered at the margins of the sky, bustled by the horizon, waiting for their turn to cross our stage. And when my Carlos met me at the Arby’s and we kissed under the lights above the Arby’s, oh there were clouds then too, and the lights shown through them in delightful ways, hiding behind and then casting rays through and then bursting out from behind as the wind escorted the clouds across the sky. And when my Carlos married me, in front of the whole town and every eye that watches us implacably from space, there was only one cloud, and it stretched long from one side of the sky to the other, an unbroken line of vapor that I took to mean the unbroken line of our love, but that of course is just my projected narrative. A cloud does not have a narrative. It exists perfectly in the moment and for the moment.

Clouds don’t matter much, I suppose. Not being able to talk about clouds doesn’t matter. But to have some real part of your life taken from you, no matter how small. To have it suppressed. To have to constantly work around the clouds in the sky. It takes a toll. And now I feel such freedom and joy. And I say: “Look at the clouds in the sky. They mean nothing, and yet they are there and they are pretty. Isn’t that nice?”