Forgetting My Clouds

Stuff written when I was somewhat bummed, a year ago.

Forgetting my Clouds

Every time I trip over my backpack in the dark,

I remind myself to forget where it is, and trip over it all over again.

I am not clumsy, just cultivating a replenishing stock of

In The Now.

The Immediate,

All so I can overlook looking up.

–Or in–

I trip over towers and towels alike, keeping my eyes on the ground

And dodge every passing cloud’s shadow.

It makes it easy, or at least tolerable;

It really never will be easy anymore, but I still walk.

Running when the smallest shadows loom overhead,

Shadowing my head and clouding my mind equally, rousing dark glints off my heart.

It’s then that I try even harder not to look up:

I look for things to bring down, to bring me down,

Delving into other people’s wounds and wells,

Going down inside the troubles they don’t want seeing the light.

But it’s ok,

I’m hiding from my own shadow: no light will see these.

Looking out through their eyes,

Shaded,

I can walk outside, directing them to look down or at least to the side, shuffling their feet.

It only works because they are so utterly beautiful.

Because they too have been burned by their own reflections far worse than any Sun.

But I am a shadow, absorbing grief and reflecting only a vague outline.

Light only redirects me now, to new and darker areas within

Myself,

 And into the sky I won’t look at, not even if it’s a thunderstorm.

See, though all this time I’ve been trying to get the sky to forget Me,

But I will never be able to forget It,

Not when I left my trailing white wings hanging up there, reminding me not to forget.