Sometime very recently, as in perhaps a week ago only, i started to see shapes in clouds.

i don’t know why i never could before—certainly not for lack of wondering about it. It seems a strange thing: that one is a creative and yet incapable of a common imagining. Of course, like all things before 2020, i took this issue rather too seriously. Personally, even.

And then, eight months and change in to this catastrophic roller coaster of a year, it just happened. i noticed a nighttime arrangement of glorious clouds that took up half the sky and didn’t look so different from a peaceful Audre Lorde. She had some comet pals, and a backdrop so deeply black that all her greyscale features were clear. She looked bolstered, capable and knowing above a constant Kennebec River. i thanked her.

Since then—every day!—i look up to identifiable illustrations. Anymore i don’t wonder or try. The sky shows me, and my eyes see.