Cloud Chaser

Those too-perfect fluffy white clouds and the breaks of baby-blue sky keep moving past my window. It's all too easy to ignore the one branch of dead leaves that's waving in the wind and focus on the still, empty trees past it, standing like a painted background. And on the clouds. Its like someone picked up my room and put it in a box, except I'm not supposed to know, so they're moving a pattern of clouds outside the window like some light-up kid's mobile or a movie background. I'm living on the blue screen.

Try harder next time, I figured you out. In fact, I think I've seen that cloud before. It's just a looping pattern. I could swear I've seen it all before. Sometimes everything just looks familiar. Everyone you pass by on the street, you just look at them and practically have to shake your head so you realize you don't actually know them from some infamous somewhere. Everyone. And all that shaking leads to quite a headache.

I like to look at the clouds and try to figure out what they are. But they look different every time, even as they look the same. That once-rabbit is now an elephant and that one used to be a donut-cow but now… now I just don't know what it is. And then I'd make up stories. How the donut-cow got its hole and why it isn't anymore. Why spreading grey clouds look like someone squirted a syringe full of jelly into the white cloud mass.

There are only so many stories in the world. Then they just start to blend and repeat themselves. It makes sense then that the same goes for people. Faces, mannerisms, there can only be so many variations. Then you're some cross between Maria and Juan Carlos. Just think how many people have lived your story before. How many people were almost Nancy, without that bit about Tom, or... or how everyone would like to think they're an individual and that's exactly why they can't be.

The clouds look like they're running away. I wonder what from. Clouds have nothing to be afraid of up in their big fluffy sky-world. I can imagine myself running after them, my feet slamming against the invisible surface, my hands bent into claws and my mouth open. I run after them and wave my arms and growl and snarl and scream like I'm a three-year-old monster and they just keep running away from me on invisible cloud legs and cloud feet. Or hooves. I wonder if clouds have hooves. Cloud chaser.

Some people always look like they're running away from something. You can tell, when people run… some of them are running away from something, some horrible memory, from being the fat kid, from being alone, from being. Their arms flail erratically and they look kind of scared. Too scared to look behind them, but too scared not to, so their eyes dart everywhere. They don't want me to know why they're running, so they give me a dirty look, but then cover it quickly to try to pretend whatever they're running from isn't there. Some people are running toward something, into someone's arms, a warm home. Goals. Something. They look up and ahead of them. Never back. Maybe they're running from something, too, but they've managed to cover it up with whatever they're running towards. They don't even notice it anymore, there's just something inside driving them on. Some people can't remember which kind they are anymore, so they just run.

I don't run. I'd rather hide. They make it easy for me, putting me in this cloud-circled box. I don't even need to build my own walls anymore. It's all here for me. Not that I don't anyway, I just don't have to. I'm rather used to the walls that I build, the way I look out from two feet behind my eyes. Maybe that's why my vision has always been bad. I'm starting from further back than they thought. Maybe that's why I hate my body so much sometimes… because I know there's someone much smaller trapped inside, entombed in thick, thick walls. Maybe I am trapped. I'm just used to it because I don't run. I don't need to, everyone else is. Maybe I should.

I used to imagine I was being wrapped in a blanket of soft clouds when I pulled my feather comforter up to my chin. Soft, smooth bed underneath me, soft, fluffy comforter on top, I was like a cloud sandwich. A worm in a cloud apple. An inverted Oreo. The comforter was light and fluffy in a dense, heavy sort of way, and it could've smothered me. I could feel it pressing down, making my limbs heavy, making me stay still and sleep. Maybe I'm just enveloped in heavy clouds. Maybe that's why I feel like I can't move. I'm trapped in clouds and grey jelly.

Maybe I'll be free when the clouds stop running. Maybe I should stop chasing them.

I'm wrapped in layers of thick cloud and it fills my head, cottony, soft and absorbing. The clouds pull everything they can from me and then they just pull me, hoping to glean one more little thing, whatever it is. They crave saturation as much as I do. They pull me along, arms flailing, mouth open screaming, my feet slamming into the invisible ground that is not soft like the clouds. Cloud puppet. They take my tears and rain them salty down on the world. Their misty hands cover my eyes and I can't see. I'm pulled blindly along through the crowds, staring blankly ahead of me into the skies. All I know is the sky is crying my tears, the tears I can't cry because the clouds took them.