Clouds

CW: Mentions suicide

What’s more ephemeral and beautiful than a cloud? Who doesn’t remember gazing into a cobalt sky to admire awesome puffy plumes of a white nimbus or the rows of a mackerel sky plowed by an invisible farmer? Who hasn’t wished to float among them or fly through them, or above them? Nothing lifts my heart quite like watching clouds. I don’t think there’s a better way to kill time on the planet.

That’s just what me and my buddy Andy did.  We’d hang out at his apartment complex after a meeting or a meal on a lazy summer afternoon. He lived in a Pittsburgh suburb near the Youghiogheny (Yok-i-GAY-nee) River where the rents were more affordable. It was actually closer to McKeesport. Section 8 housing— the suburban ghetto. The name of the river comes from the Lenape word meaning “water flowing in a contrary direction” — in this case north, up to the Monongahela where it meets the Allegheny to form the Ohio at Pittsburgh.