The Cloud

She woke up hoping this one time the cloud would be gone.  But it wasn't.  It had been with her since her fifteenth day on Earth.  It was an odorless cloud of smoke that just floated around her.  Mostly still unless there was a breeze.  It baffled doctors and after a battery of tests her parents halted the search for the source.  She was sat on the couch at the age of four and told to accept her cloud.  It was part of her and they loved her and her cloud. 

She attended kindergarten and was sent home after the second day.  The principal explained that some of the kids were having allergic reactions to the cloud and it would be better if she was home schooled.  Although she was kept fairly secluded at her her parents' country house she would sometimes have to face the harsh public.  When she was eight years old she convinced her parents to let her ride her bike to the general store to buy some candy.  On the way down the dirt road she came across five older boys.  Her cloud clung to her and trailed off like a comet tail behind her.  The boys all stopped and yelled every mean thing can imagine you would say to someone with a cloud around them.  "Hey Pig Pen!"  "Why don't you take a shower?!"  "Are you on fire?!"  She put her head down, stood up on her bike and peddled back home with tears streaming into the cloud.

As she grew older she came to accept that she had two friends and would never have any more.  They were the only two who were not allergic and did not mind playing in her cloud.  Love was not a consideration for her.  Who would want to live with and love her cloud?  Family parties were planned on good weather days so they could all sit outside in the breeze.  The breeze was her only refuge from the cloud and sometimes, just sometimes, she didn't have a cloud around her.

When she turned twenty-three she decided to move out of her parents' house.  She had earned her college degree online and wanted to attempt a life in the city.  She moved close to the park and got a job telemarketing from home.  A temporary job that would pay some bills until she wrote her first book.  City life proved difficult.  Avoiding stares and blatant gesticulating waves in the subway.  But she learned to press on focusing on her book and the park breeze.

One day in the park, where she went to escape, she felt a breeze so sweet she put her arms out and smiled at the dissipation of her cloud.  As she came over the crest of the hill the breeze grew stronger and forced her to giggles.  Ah free of the cloud.  She closed her eyes and just stood letting the breeze encircle her.  When she looked up to continue on her way a young man was walking towards her.  Around him a breeze swirled and kicked and twisted.  Furrowing her brow trying to figure what kind of wind congregates around one person she came to realize that he had a breeze just as she had a cloud.  They stopped in their tracks and smiled.