amelia kirkness
Cloud watching
On the hillside at the school field green against grey
we were wrapped in the harsh steel wool of the clouds,
the headachey cold wind and the thirsty drops of rain
marking the tennis courts with freckles.
The after-school sports programme we both hated
finished just in time for the sky to open up.
We were hungering for a thunderstorm,
little girls baying for something loud and furious,
like catharsis on our behalf from the atmosphere
because Sam kicked me in the shins that week
and we didn’t get invited to a birthday party.
Her mum let her come home with me, the intent
to stay for dinner and no later because this was
a Monday, alright.
Clouds roiled purple blue black,
a thin suspension of rain, like her princess bed canopy,
over the plains driving up the hill to my house.
And we lined my stuffed animals up on the sofa behind,
put Barbie and the Diamond Castle in the DVD player
and she was blonder than me so she was Barbie and I was
obligatory brunette best friend when we sang along,
but we spent more time peering past the TV through the curtains,
out the window into the darkened garden where the water
simply poured and we got a good view of the lightning.
Only a few strikes, though.
When it got too dark to watch the rain we started to
lose our patience for each other, the movie ended,
she picked up the couch cushion, white and stained
from pancake mornings in the past, and we pillow-fought
but that petered out too. Untalkative over pasta for dinner,
her mum came to pick her up and we didn’t
pester her to linger for coffee.
But the rain pounded at the roof all night.
how did the sky look?
Funny how the thing I remember the most
was the light, the growing lack of it, colours across the clouds,
shadows carving friends’ faces into statues of gods and future memories,
sun slipping down like a bra strap.
It was a fine warm summer night but it rained for me to look at them all
and the streets and the fields in the dusk,
urban stars of distant lamp posts.
Concrete plastic atmosphere, expansive sadness, loud voices and
the lonely thoughts, almost too cliché to have. So I focussed on the facts:
the sunset was beautiful
and the photos were stunning
and my heart ached
and it was all blue and gold.
Amelia Kirkness is a Christchurch student and writer who has been published in ReDraft and Catalyst anthologies. She likes vampire fiction, Finnish pop music, and ornate teaware. She is trying her best.