Shadows of Clouds

4:17 am. I fell asleep early, at 10:30, and woke at 1:00. Lay in bed thinking for a couple hours, and finally got up. Now, do I try to nap for a couple hours before driving Tori out to the college to meet up with her car-pool? (I never did quite grasp what the event is. It involves going to Hillsboro, though.)

Maybe I do. I'm very tired now. Tired enough even to sleep a bit, maybe.

Such a strange life. Nothing seems quite real to me. Nothing but the the touch. I'm only really alive when I'm touching somebody. The rest of it is a long slow cinematic pan, a sliding picture-show. Words leave people's mouths and float to my ears. I hear them or I don't: I make my best guess as to what they might mean, either way. Who knows? The speaker might not know what he means either. We're all hard at work producing meanings for each other's consumption, but we seldom achieve much but echoes of what other people meant before.

The trees of the park walk deliberately around me. Kisses are real. You are real. But future and past, wobbling through our talk? I can barely even track them in the conventional sense, let alone believe in them.

The patterned clouds push the trees down to the horizon; their shadows creep over the root-mounds. Great rushes of tenderness, of desire. I'm afraid for you, afraid for all of us.

These fragile bodies. All we have.