Cloud chasers

Life unfolds on this roundabout. The driver is unsure of his exit, so as he explores the myriad options available to him, cursing under his breath and becoming increasingly dizzied by his own confusion, I turn inwards to the grass island at our centre. A man in an unnecessarily thick winter overcoat sits slumped against the severe arrows, looking up at the sky. Appearing to plead with it for answers. Lost in the clouds. Even if his point of view is fixed by nothing more than the blur of cheap alcohol seeping through his veins, I can’t resist following his gaze.

Oh, the tower block. The cranes. The unceasing metallic grating and mechanical buzz of construction going on all around us in this colour-drained boom town. Is he wishing for the heavens, a warm bed for the night above the teeming streets, or merely a place to look down on the scurrying insects below and marvel at how seemingly purposeful they are, despite their obvious lack of direction?

I sympathise with him. I want to be up there too, sat dangerously close to the edge of nothingness, with the gusts - finding themselves unhindered by concrete obstacles at such an extraordinary height - churning through my hair, blowing its limp and dry strands into my face. Sucking in the breezes invading my mouth, causing me to gasp and giggle in fits of exhilaration.

Counting the clouds in. Counting them all out again.

I don’t want to be alone, though. Not alone. Not this time. I want to share the solitude of silent thoughts, and feel ourselves entwined in the act of their thinking. Hand in hand and crazy notion in crazy notion with one who understands; one who wants to be here perched on the precipice of all and everything scattered below; one who knows that with a clumsy wrong move we would kiss the air in a single second that would never end; one who wants to share the need to stay in such security, yet in the same breath taste the heady, unmistakable flavour of perfect disaster. Up there, beyond the hearing of anyone or anything that isn’t simply engaged in passing flight, we could shout out the need to escape, escape and somehow escape.

There’s a break in the clouds. Don’t worry yourself. Keep holding tight. There are more on the way over there, just beyond the slow-motion ballet of cranes.

Back to the grass island. Could that be what its single resident is imagining? Maybe. Too late now, because I’ll never know, since my last glimpse of him comes as a shaft of sunlight hits his face and he screws up his eyes against such a blinding invasion. As the light inside our vehicle suddenly disappears, replaced by the phosphorus glow of the subterranean tunnel taking us under the harsh concrete landscape, I close my eyes and return to the top of the tower.

Almost imperceptibly, I feel myself resting the back of my right hand in the palm of my left. My fingers close in on themselves. Grasping at nothing. Nothing except the lasting sensation of your hand in mine. Keep clutching, fingers locked, and we can shout and scream and face the elements together from on high.

Chase our clouds home. Yours is undoubtedly going to get there first, but I don’t mind. It will be worth it just to see your shy smile of triumph when your cloud crosses the finishing line formed by jetstreams at thirty-five thousand feet.

So, your sky or mine?