A Sky Without Clouds

 All the clouds fled from the sky
So the people tried to get them back
Luring them with flowers the color of hard candy
Tempting them with songs that sounded sweet  like children’s laughter
But the clouds kept drifting until
There was nothing but empty sky
And clear skies leave too much room for reflection
The people could not see the beauty in broken things
The sun was too honest, uninterrupted by clouds or filtered by fog
It burned their skin and made them feel
Transparent and overexposed like a film negative
And its hard to fall in love in a world without shadows
So they decided to fill the sky with clouds
Make the world dark again
They cut clouds from cloth and spun them from cotton
They even painted clouds to billboards,
Stark white blotches against ivory
They made fluffy Paper Mache piñatas
And strung them up like lanterns
On the roofs of sky scrapers the people sat, legs crossed
Like protesters, chanting and swaying with their paper cloud posters
Until the clouds came back, bloated and gray and hungover
But the people rejoiced anyway
Only to find that when the gray opened up and bled rain so cold
That it glittered like diamonds and tore pockmarks in their skin
That they wanted a sky without clouds