Why Do Clouds Cry?

I know now that clouds don’t cry to water our picnics and marry us with wet kisses. From under a hippo’s wallow to the pebble’s peak roost, I have found the places we cannot go are visited most often within our dreams. 

I walked inside your laughter last when I had forgotten the words to anything but “I love you.” You always had embarrassed hands, hiding in mine until one day, they slid away to be wiped off for good. I’d like to think they’d still fit. I used to float on plastic confidence, bursting with giggles, sipping sun-shy drinks, on your ocean smile. You made a splash. I liked the puddles most: oil-slick eyes, rainbows of other’s opportunity, spent on journeys away from you, though they never reflected me. Petrichor was there upon your brow, neck, and the forest of your life. No amount of perfume could hide the smell of growing things. I used to lay down in the dirt and let the worms tickle me for hours until they knew I was not for eating: indigestible. The floor is lonely now; the growing’s gone on without me. 

I guess we should never set foot in idyllic places, or else we might find them ruined for us. We cannot stay, we cannot go back, and some would say it’s best to never have arrived at all. Even then, the memories are not the same, they would welcome me, but I won’t stop by. Yet I would still say the places you offered me were feather pillows for my heart, a bath for my burdens, and a sky for my mind, and there was never a better moment than every one I had with you. 

I know now why clouds cry; it is so they may touch the ground one last time. And after you, I shall forever find comfort in the rain’s embrace.