Mornings here are cold & gray. The air trickles in like water, is water, through the open window. The mountains hold the high clouds over our heads so when we cross them on Sundays after I get off work & head toward the river the sky splits open & it’s 100 degrees & the trees are green & not brown. The water is green & not gray. There are no dimensions to the high hard clouds, hard to tell the feel & distance & taste. You are covering one eye with your palm sometimes & looking upward.

There are no patterns in the weather but we look for them, always. Each morning our eyes are hands & are held up & open, receiving. On the bike ride into town you will feel wind, warm or cold. When you don’t know what to say you will talk about it. You will introduce yourself with it & it will be easy, vaporous. What depth your need for escape? How easy is your breath? How are we all still alive together? We could show our limbs & warm them, elsewhere. We make the same things of yesterday, feeling similar.

Sometimes in the house you rent, there gather souls who are a different color of alive, & no weather matters, no weather exists that prevents a consumption underneath it. Then you do not mention it. Then the weather is for your mothers & fathers only, the same as it has been always. Disregard the high clouds or the hot sun. Do not disregard the shapes the clouds make against the blue. Do not disregard the way seeing a cumulo T. Rex makes your heart feel. It will feel that way again.

Sometimes we are drinking in the fog at night or in the daytime & we are high, & the sun & moon are far from us, & we are looking at each other. You can tell the truth then, & people will listen. It will not be about things beyond your control, or maybe. The haze will dissolve & you will go for a walk under the stars & look at the ones tattooed on your sides & you will sigh & the sigh will make it all the way up, unhindered. You will know when you are too close by the sounds the others make, how the next day sobered they will tell you they haven’t talked like that since college, & you will wonder what that means, & nod & look upward & form thoughts, like how the sky is your mood, & what does it mean that things are leaking from it.