Clouds

May 24, 2004

I would like to leave this house. I would like to leave for a vacation. I would like to leave the grounds and go flying in the clouds where I know my head wants to be. I would like to take my daughter with me and give her the one thing she has always wanted; the one thing I cannot give her. That is to fly. I can hear her giggles; see her endless smile, showing her growing teeth. Her eyes wide with pure happiness. She would flip over, lie on her back, with her hands behind her head and her knees up, look at me, and say, “What? What are you looking at?” Then I would laugh because she would be so silly. She would understand better what it means to have water in the clouds. Maybe raindrops would form on our arms, legs, and then drop randomly out of the sky. We would get cold and Gen would say, “Cold doesn’t bother me,” because she never gets cold. She would never want to leave. Knowing this ahead of time, I would get us some really good raincoats.

I won a contest with this poem, Through the Slip Stream and a dancer danced to it.