tea please

let it be told that i fell in love with a cloud. let it be told that it was a tuesday, that it hung like rain without it. fluff dipped under a happy blue sky. the edges were headed to the future. years ago i eyed it not knowing what it would become. there was a puddle in toronto cowed by crowds. the moon pulled on the waters as an ocean. feet sludged through mindless reflections. i was drinking coffee. you were biting your nails. another was ordered, asking what it meant to be in love. was it the milky colour of the cloud. was it the word possibly spelt out by itself above. was it the buttered white spread from all of space to the stuck, still people here. i sat. mornings passed. it was simple: i wanted to mention my desire, to sit in a sunshine the cloud could one day block, to show you the ground with the dead end of my foot. the way my big toe lays mute and how it fumbles into a slipper with whispers of what it was to run. “how fast do you think that cloud there is going.” you did not raise your head. “now is not the time.” a third coffee. a second cup emptied of lost water. i cross my hands. the cloud shaped itself into an ear, into the distance between a forehead and a thought, into the universe at the beginning and the end too, and then it moved all of it else where, some place beyond the reach of love.