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.