So ever since I was a kid, I'm I enjoyed staring at the clouds, right?

Like watching them shape shift as they fought against the wind.
Always wondered, after a cloud change can it still recognize its own reflection or what a
stranger that cloud must become to itself?

I remember my 2 feet on the ground, my head aimed up toward heaven and all I could do
was watch.
My uncle was diagnosed with Alzheimer's on that day.
He became a cloud.

His thoughts and memories right, fighting against the gust of wind.
Have you ever seen a man try to Rubik's Cube together his own reality or wrestle his
memories into submission?

He tells me stories about the cloud he used to be for the 100th time.
Y'all and I would listen.

There was an eerie beauty, and watching him relive himself, they say a man's memories
formed its own cloud within the mind.

Too high for earth, yet too low to reach heaven, stuck in the perfect purgatory.

Because there's no rule of architecture when it comes to castles made out of air and
dissolving spirit.

So, after his sky is kissed by amnesia, the names of his loved ones become ash on his
tongue.
His mouth and iron furnace are casted.

Either way, it is death before death, the way this disease erases the mind and spirit long
before the body can collapse.

And no one told me that a cloud was able to fall from the sky.

But apparently when the moisture gets too heavy for the body, a cloud would bleed itself
out into raindrops.

Maybe that's why they taste like tears.

Maybe that's why he became the perfect storm, Thunder roaring from his mouth.

Lightning strikes as his fist punches the wall because his wedding ring is now a reminder
of a marriage he can no longer remember.

I remember at his wife's funeral he thought he was dressing himself for the wedding day.
Have you ever tried to explain the difference between the two?
I just let him become that burning fog fading from his own fingertips.
So I did my best to remember his love when he could no longer remember himself.
Because a cloud y'all a cloud will black out the sky in darkness once it forgets its purpose.
The silver lining becomes a noose that chokes the sunshine right out of daylight.
And I remember my 2 feet on the ground, my head aimed up toward heaven and all I could
do watch.
I mean, have you ever tried holding a cloud?
By the recollection?
Have you ever just tried holding a cloud?
And try not to shake that cloud until he remembers that he wasn't always a cloud.
That he used to be a mountain of a man long for Alzheimer's, broke him from this earth,
placed him into that sky just out of my reach.
And then I become that kid again.
My 2 feet on the ground, my head aimed up toward heaven and all I could do.