Grey Skies

The sky is gray grey gray and i wonder if we're in a Ray Bradbury story, living on a far off planet that is just almost like ours, but a key feature is missing. I am missing the sun. I read that it is warm, somewhere, and I yearn for that somewhere off this grey gray grey planet. 

I will fill the house with noise and activity today, and pretend that housecleaning is dancing and the strange light of swirling bulbs is the sun.

My son is ill. He has strep. He is home, but I cannot dance with him today. He is cloistered in his room. I am cloistered in the house, a recluse of my own making. A friend is whisking me away for lunch today. She is thanking me for something that to me is nothing. I am grateful for her gratitude, and her whisking. And for lunch. 

This weekend I am going to the mountains. This is not a metaphor, or a simile. I will be up high, closer to the greyness. I might reach up and tear apart the clouds with angry hands, pocketing fistsful of blue sky to share with sad friends far below. The sky will dissolve between my fingers. The torn sky will make my pockets damp with disappointment. The ragged clouds will fill with thunder at my impudence and sew the seams with lightning. I will laugh and tell my friends that I saw the blue. Together we will look up into the gray grey gray and dream of burning stars burning us.