I haven't had to think about you in awhile. Maybe it was the graduation caps, the football stands, or the way the summer air hits the back of my neck. I saw kids walking, grabbing their diplomas, excitement in their hands knowing that this was just the start of it.

The start of growing up, moving on to newer greater things. A fresh new start that was going to be ahead. No one would know me, no one would know the pain I had, a clean slate.

I glance around me seeing curly hair sneaking under different graduation caps, remembering how your hair would sneak out of the caps from swim meets. You would sit next to me in the stands, goosebumps from the cold air. Just thinking about it gave me goosebumps sitting on the stands outside in 90 degree weather.

No one knows where they are going, what their life is going to take them. All these ambitious children, with their dreams cascading from their pockets. And I wonder, was graduation like that for you?

Sitting on the chairs in the field, eyeing your parents in the stand, waving frantically making sure you know where to look when coming off the stage so they can take your picture a thousand times. The sweat dripping from the crease in your knees, the sun bearing down making the graduation gown feel like the foil suits people use to work out. Everything you had worked for, the heartbreaks, the endless hours of practice, and the nights where you sat in your room crying. This was it, a new life awaiting.

Crossing the stage, the diploma. The diploma saying you made it this far. Only a piece of paper with a copied signature from the principal who doesn't even know your name. He gives you a handshake as you walk down the stage, heart beating as you don't want to embarrass yourself but looking too happy, or not too not happy, just the perfect look.

And the tassle is moved to the side. I wonder what it was like for you. I look around the graduates, hoping to see someone like you so I can pull you aside and say,

I love you.

So many times I have been told in a nice way, "Good luck dear sailing into the land of 'your never gonna fucking make it' 'I am gonna tell you I told you so' don't come to me asking to turn the clock back" kind of way. There are times where they were right and maybe I should have taken the narrow way, but the people that are telling me this should know that I have NEVER taken the straight and narrow.

Since a child I have fought, screamed and been a total you know what when told I should go one way. I was told as a child sitting my bare butt on the doctors table that the shot was going to go in my butt and that it wouldn't hurt. I yelled, well, screeched like a chimpanzee whose banana was taken away and ran down the hallway butt naked saying I was not going to get a shot in the butt. I ended up getting it in my arm and yes it hurt like hell but I did it my way.

So why now do I have to turn and do it the way some people think I should. I didn't listen to my father when he told me to not have sex with my boyfriend, which in turn sent me to a boarding school that changed my life into me wanting to help abused and neglected kids. I cursed and yelled and called my mom horrid names as a teenager but have the best relationship now where I can be honest and call her best friend.

I do it my own way and as much as it looks like a picasso painting, when you step back and look at the entire canvas, the work that has been done is quite simply put, a masterpiece.                  

I never noticed how much I don't pay attention to things as I found out today by lying by the pool. Besides noticing the heat and the sweat that was forming in places I never knew should sweat, like the back of my knees, I noticed the clouds. I had always heard about people watching the clouds take shapes but I sat there, frying like a chicken totally mesmerized by one.

I remember drawing clouds as a child. A circle with lumps, camel back ridges, balloons in a white trash bag. I looked at the clouds today and it was unlike any of the pictures I had drawn. Whips of something, kind of like cotton candy. Silk hair that is used during Christmas time to house the Village People, my mother always warning me to not play with it because it was glass woven into silk and it could cut me. These clouds wouldn't though, like a puff of cold air that comes out of your mouth, pretending to be cool as a child and pretend I was smoking.

I tried to think what they would feel like. A cool breeze that surrounds your neck leaving trails of goosebumps. The way at restaurants where there are misters outside, that when you walk under is refreshing and tingling to your skin. The feel of the "soft" sand on the beach. The way worn out sheets tender and so soft.

When I looked at the details of the cloud it was ever changing. Different parts moved and then vanished but when looking at the entire mass the shape seemed to stay the same. The cloud moved over the sun, the dark parts of the cloud turned a gray but the outer parts showed the sunlight. When watching it move the cloud seemed to take forever, waiting for the boy to take you on a date, an hour at walmart for an oil change that feels like the entire afternoon. When the cloud moved away from the sun, you could see a rainbow on the edges, proving a point that there are God's gifts everywhere only if you notice.

I never thought I would be so moved by a cloud. Just. One. Cloud.