A Shared Cloud

She loved clouds. When she was 8, she and her mother would always look up to them. Warmed by the spring sunshine, they would lie on the fresh, green grass that would often pick at their skin. The first puffs of milky, white clouds would float across the sky. 

“That looks like a rabbit, Mama,” the girl would say. 

The mother would laugh saying she saw something else like a baseball bat. Every day the fleecy clouds floated across the bright, blue sky and sometimes veiled the sun, and whenever they looked up, the sun would radiate their skin and they loved it so much. The little girl adored those moments so much until she dropped them one day. Like she was holding a glass vase and tripped over something, and she didn’t know what was coming. 

…

“Paige, come outside, the weather is great!” her Papa shouted from the balcony. 

She opened the balcony and a whip of cool air brushed against her soft skin. She nodded looking around, but not up to where the clouds were. 

“Look at the clou-” her father said, only to realize what he said, “Sorry-”

“It’s fine,” she replied back, walking away.

She was like a puffy white cloud, floating gracefully everywhere, but inside there was a thunderstorm in her which was one she couldn’t escape. She wished she could scream into a black hole, sucking away all her voice into nothingness. She didn’t want to scream out loud because she didn’t want people to come up to her and tell her they were sorry when she knew they didn’t mean it. She was used to letting go of her friendships, of her relationships, of the things she loved but she could never stop her hand from grabbing onto her mother. Because without her mother's warmth and her wet kisses, it was hard for her to let go of everything they had. Her mother was more than a chapter in her book, she was her whole book, the moon that shined in her darkness, and the sun that lighted up her world. Now, she was just a tiny star with the others, and she was trying to find where the star was. She didn’t have a moon to look up at, she only had stars to gaze at, spending hours trying to find where her mother's star was. 

She wanted to holler at the night sky and shatter all the stars from the pitch-black sky hoping they would fall off and break like glass into a million pieces, and she would step on each and every one of them. She wanted to step at her mother so she would cry out and the girl would tell her if she was the moon, she didn’t have to beat down on her. She would now have to pick up the tiny shards of the stars, pricking at her hand making it bleed, and she could only go so far before she decided it hurt her enough. If only her mom was visible from the farthest distance. 

She wanted to cry into a waterfall, knowing it would catch her tears and the salty tears would mix in with the freshwater, so when animals came to drink from it they would understand how many tears her mother left Paige with. She wished everyone could feel the pain she felt and see how many tears she would shed every day, praying for her mother. She wanted her tears to pour from the clouds so when children stuck out their tongues they would only get a salty taste and flinch away in horror. 

But, there was something else she couldn’t describe. She felt the black hole enlarging in her heart, taking over the love and warmth her mother gave her. She didn’t think anything could beat the tenderness her mother gave her until she felt this. It wasn’t darkness in her heart, but a naive feeling like she was waiting for her mother to come back and fill the hole in her heart with the love she had always been wanting. She was waiting for someone to come back to her and shower her with fondness and fill her heart. She wanted to look up at the stars, pull her heart from her chest and hold it up to the sky and ask her mother to fill it up, and she wanted to have her mother give a burst of warmness and beauty, so bright that it could light up the night sky and be her new moon. 

She wanted to jump onto a cloud to find her mother again and slap her on the face for leaving her, but also hug her affectionately and cry a thousand tears of joy, turning it into a waterfall so the people could all see how much love a mother could give. Her mom was alive, and what hurt her most was that she was out there in the world, with all the tiny stars, and she didn’t bother to be her moon. No, Paige’s mother was someone else's moon. 

She wanted to ask her mother, was she enough for her? Were the smiles real or simply plastered on her face? Was it her or her mother? She wanted to know what made her mother pack her suitcase and go away, leave the door but never open it again. The door was wide open. The wind was coming in, freezing the girl but she would wait. Even if it meant standing outside in front of the blazing, scalding sun during the summers or the frosty cold winters, she would wait. Now, the door once opened by her mother was getting burned by a fire, illuminating the room, burning it to ashes. But, the girl would stay, waiting for her mother to rescue her. And maybe, once the house was burned down, she could see the sky, and her mother would be right outside on their favorite hill looking at the clouds. 

…

“Is this your mother?” an old lady asked me. She held up a photograph of my mother when she gave birth to me. 

“Oh! Yes! Sorry-” Paige exclaimed, embarrassed. 

“She’s very pretty! How is she?”

“I don’t know…”

“You don’t know?”

“She left when I was little, so I’m not sure.”

“I’m sorry…”

A long silence was hovering above them. “I know,” Paige responded. “I know.”

Paige walked away in silence with the tense aura still overflowing. “Hey!” the lady said. “If you want my advice, why don’t you do something? To make you feel like your mother is with you? It worked for me!”

She walked up to the hill and it felt like she could see her mother on it awaiting her. She had recurring dreams of her mom on this hill. As she lay on the grass, she could feel the sun rays warming her skin. She hoped her mother was also on a hill, lying on the grass, looking up at the sky too. Maybe her mother was looking at the clouds, wondering what her daughter was doing, whether she was happy or sad, alive or dead, and the daughter wondered the same thing about her mother. The daughter hoped that they were looking at the same cloud, and maybe they would see different things. Her mother would see a sunflower while the daughter would see a rose. Neither would know what the other saw. All the daughter wanted was for her mother to be on a hill, looking up, even if their hands couldn’t touch each other, even if they couldn’t look at each other’s smile, and even if the tenderness flowing through her mother couldn’t fill up her heart, she hoped they could share their love by gazing at the clouds. She knew they would never see each other again, but she hoped that every time she looked up at the sky, so would her mother, wherever she was. Maybe, if she looked close enough at the stars she could see where her mother was and she didn’t have to yell and scream to find her mom, and maybe she didn’t have to cry thousands of tears. She could hold her heart to the tiny star and push it in to fill the gap. 

Her dad told her, “If you look closely, you can see your mother’s face in the sky and that’s when you know she is looking out for you.”

She closed her eyes and glanced up to see nothing, but she didn’t believe it. She knew her mother was looking at the same clouds as her, thinking about her, waiting for her. Maybe, her mother was screaming at the same stars, bashing down on each one of them, crying in the same waterfall, or holding up her heart at the stars. The girl knew that one day, they could both hold hands, and sit on clouds while watching everything together. Their hearts would be so full, that they would spill out their affection and love to everyone. 

“Mother!” she wanted to shout across the world, “can you see the clouds!?”

And her mother would run across the world to come to her only to realize they have been looking at the same cloud. Her mother would smile and say to her, “I can see the clouds and, in them, I can see you.”