The Weekend Girl Cloud

The Weekend Girl Cloud

[for Geneva]

The weekend girl cloud blinks across the pink sky to deposit cartoonily exaggerated rain drops, blue with a badge of reflective iridescence, on the land below. The candy children, in button up dresses made of animator cells, stitched with cheesy cliche dreams about flying, about showing up naked in class, and about lost loved ones, celebrate to their venerated revenant above. The grass, of course, is sheened like green butterscotch suckers. All is glassy glee in the land rained upon by the weekend girl cloud.

This is the usual scene.

The problem with the weekend girl cloud, so worshiped by so many, is that she harbors the wet spirits of all my fantasy crushes. I should say, that's my problematic relationship with the weekend girl cloud. I am reassured by the automaton mechanicals that I will outgrow my pubescent ideas and one day stick to earthly pleasures. Obviously, they have never been a 17 year old boy.

On this particular weekend I wait upon the hillside for the sky to smear across its palette. Then in comes the girl cloud. She sparkles Powerpuff style. Her rain bubbles down, intermixing the colors and the forces that mold them. A chorus of candy children hobble under her shadow, arms skyward, feet springing them off the green crystal grass. They offer to make a Skittles sacrifice. The weekend girl cloud beams and rains down to heal their cheeks and crops.

I get jealous. I run out into the field, painted poppies tumbling up into the air behind me, and I shout: "Weekend girl cloud! I bring you more than these petty worshipers can offer. I bring you love!" I crash through the chorus of candy children and unpeel my shirt, fall to my knees, and sing an eternal love song.

The weekend girl cloud has an eye for sincerity and hoists me up. I am lifted by little winglets of rainwater. I am misted into her folds and greeted by my heavenly hosts. They are more transparent and spooky than I anticipated. They pilot a bright vessel but they are like dull candles. I say to them, "Hi, I am in love with you." That is the most creative I can be at 6000 feet in the air.

They all speak in unison in the most thunderous whisper: "WE LOVE YOU MORE."

With that, I am ejected on a tornado's twirl. I spiral to the ground flecked with dewey love. I land and look around at the bewildered candy children. I grab the nearest kid, a pigtailed girl with countless freckles. "I have tasted divine love and it is beautiful," I say. "I have never felt more adored. You crave the rains, but I — I have felt the cloud's real power."

The girl grabs me back by the shoulders. She pierces me with very wide eyes. "We have all been inside. Each and every one of us. We aren't a cult, mister. We are bunch of lovesick individuals each pleading his or her pain. And I know in my heart the cloud girls love me more than all others. So get on your knees and beg, mister. She's only taking one of us."

My eyes widen. I let go of my revelator. I look up and start yelling upwards like the rest of them. I have been yelling ever since.