My Old Bones are Growing New Bones
©Rachel C
Driving home I can see a string of nearly black clouds floating low in the sky. They’re thin, and almost resemble smoke, but they don’t have nearly that consistency. It’s weird to see such dark clouds so thin, and so low as if they just evaporated from the surface of the earth. So low, it seems, a tall man could reach right up and swing his hand through them, scattering the droplets and shaking them back to earth. Maybe even a short girl, with ballet flats and big dreams, could reach up and swipe them away, pull them down to her chest, breathe them in like a natural humidifier. From an angel where they lie next to the dark clouds in the horizon, they are nearly invisible, but once you’re facing the sun, they’re so close, so low, so dark, and so stretched thin you could pluck them right from the atmosphere. For some reason, I feel like these clouds, so fragile and yet out of reach. As if everyone could touch me, feel the moisture of my skin, but I am just an arms length away; a tall man’s head is too far below my feet. Touchable, right there to hold, and so far away, so scattered and stretched, so dark and no one can come near me. Those clouds, I know, aren’t me. They will pour their insides to the ground, or dissolve if they come any lower. They will disappear, and I won’t ever see these clouds again. I may have taken a dive, disappeared, dissolved for a moment, but I can resurface, I can breathe more life, I can begin again—maybe not where I left off, but where I am now. Those clouds will die, and I have not, and someday I will come close enough to touch.
July 1, 2007
Driving home I can see a string of nearly black clouds floating low in the sky. They’re thin, and almost resemble smoke, but they don’t have nearly that consistency. It’s weird to see such dark clouds so thin, and so low as if they just evaporated from the surface of the earth. So low, it seems, a tall man could reach right up and swing his hand through them, scattering the droplets and shaking them back to earth. Maybe even a short girl, with ballet flats and big dreams, could reach up and swipe them away, pull them down to her chest, breathe them in like a natural humidifier. From an angel where they lie next to the dark clouds in the horizon, they are nearly invisible, but once you’re facing the sun, they’re so close, so low, so dark, and so stretched thin you could pluck them right from the atmosphere. For some reason, I feel like these clouds, so fragile and yet out of reach. As if everyone could touch me, feel the moisture of my skin, but I am just an arms length away; a tall man’s head is too far below my feet. Touchable, right there to hold, and so far away, so scattered and stretched, so dark and no one can come near me. Those clouds, I know, aren’t me. They will pour their insides to the ground, or dissolve if they come any lower. They will disappear, and I won’t ever see these clouds again. I may have taken a dive, disappeared, dissolved for a moment, but I can resurface, I can breathe more life, I can begin again—maybe not where I left off, but where I am now. Those clouds will die, and I have not, and someday I will come close enough to touch.
July 1, 2007
It's So Easy, Now I'm Gone
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