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“Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.”

 -Rabindranath Tagore

I have decided to lie down on my front lawn’s itchy grass and watch the clouds float by and listen to the leaves whisper to their branches and trace their final fall to the ground. It might have been an unconscious rekindling of my inner-three-year-old’s flame, a brief, firm nod to a foggy past filled with finger paints and French fries. It might be just a quiet excuse to avoid the family or the television or the used textbook search and bask in something other than my room’s sole flickering lightbulb. All the same, the leaves continue to gossip behind my back, as they stroll along with the humid July air. But the clouds above are silent, wordlessly condemning the freefalls below them.

I gaze up at the blood, gold streaked sky, a stretching, private art gallery. Acting like an under-paid tour guide, my scuffed headphones begin to screech explanations, adding commentary to the panorama.  The Beatles chime in together, their haunting strains of static classics points out one cloud in particular.  

I smile when I see it. Fluttering away into the eternal corner of the pale red canvas is an enormous kite, its tail wagging in the celestial exhales. For the benefit of Mr. Kite…It’s the kite I lost when I was an anxious toddler, the splintered string had escaped the prison of my dirt stained hands and had flown off into the dusk…there will be a show tonight, on trampolines.

A rusting green car plummets down my street, shattering my thoughts. For a half-of-a-second, I wonder what the driver must have been thinking as he raced passed me, curled up on the soiled dirt, gawking stupidly into the heavens. And now my red-faced neighbor, taking her yapping dogs for their twilight walk, pantomimes her disapproval with her steps down the sidewalk. I smile and the music plays on:

As Mr. Kite flies through the ring, don't be late, John Lennon drones, performing his tricks without a sound…

The music fades for the briefest of moments and I find myself holding my breath, waiting for the next song to escape from the confines of the sky. The sun had set many sprinting minutes before but I am still lying on my back, grass clutching my sweatshirt, watching as the Man in the Moon rises into the evening sky, Mr. Kite passing directly under his cratered nose.