Cloud Work

She used to hate the rain, even though she couldn't tell you why. Maybe it was because her Grandmother hated it so, and she learned much of life from her Grandmother. 

There came a day she finally learned the art of dancing in the rain, and it lived and grew in her heart and soul. How she learned, is another story. Nevertheless, each time she woke to find the sky cluttered with clouds and the air dampened, her love for the rain grew. It grew like a vine, twisting around her bones and into her ether, winding through the troughs of her thoughts, blossoming like a finely kept garden. What had started as a hopeless, tiny seed on dry, cracked earth had grown to be a part of her as much as her right hand. 

Her soul ached for the rain. Her heart lovingly longed for it. She grew to need the rain. The inside of her was a desert, windblown and sun-beaten, bleached by the relentless heat of the sun. But that, is also another story. Perhaps many stories.

The clouds were beautiful, and she believed it. She hated that she could no longer talk in shades of gray, that phrase being ruined for a time. But it forced her to look at clouds another way, to focus on the luminescence - finding the light even in the darkest corner of the clouds; reveling in the endless texture as light darted around the depths and through to our humble earth. They drew her in, whisking her away to another time and place. Somewhere far away from her troubles.

That day, the clouds looked heavy. They felt heavy to her too, but not for the reasons they used to. They felt heavy because the mist in the air and corners of darkness reminded her that her options were so limited. She used to feel like she could go anywhere and do anything. But as she traveled through life, her options continued to narrow. So while she wanted to run away to the coast, where she could spend her days under the clouds and in the mist of the ocean, she felt it had become no more than a dream. A dream she could not ever hope to even try to chase.

And in this dark corner is where this story begins. On a cloudy, rainy day, where silence was a marker and hope a memory.