a moment alone

Overhead, the clouds move, low-slung and widely spaced, backed by sky in an unnamed shade of blue. I've always thought of clouds as two-dimensional. Not as in a child's drawing -- fluffy, rounded, symmetrical -- but like the bottoms of a fleet of irregular boats as seen from underneath: flat, pressed, only partly in view. But as I watch, the edge of this cloud curls under and the whole thing rotates around no axis at all, eddying in an unseen current. Forming, not formed. One facet is shot through with a subtle rainbow and I inhale to speak, to point it out, before I remember that I'm alone. I close my mouth. The color fades.