The Painted Cloud

I’ve seen blue skies. Lots of them. This was just another blue sky. And the grey cloud, there were lots of clouds in this sky and I’ve seen lots of those too. Save the very top of this cloud was impossible pink. Someone had painted it. Way up there, someone had painted a cloud.
It wasn’t like some circus rainbow vapor trail that airplanes do. No human hand could have done it, not with all the airplanes, rockets, and science in the world. The pink was impossible –painted with light like some gift from beyond the worldly realm.
Or like a harbinger. If it wasn’t painted by a human hand perhaps it was Death's harbinger. I was only walking down the street, but unlikely things happen. A car once jumped the curb and only missed me by two inches before disappearing back into nowhere. My death could’ve happened like that. Still could.
But staring at the sun, living every day as if it’s your last, never consulting maps or making plans? That’s bound get you lost in the middle of a dark forest halfway through your journey. On the other hand, even with the best laid schemes we still go awry, mistakes get made, and hit-and-runs don't always kill. If you’re not in the middle of a forest now, at any moment you could suddenly find yourself there.
Journeys need a little light for life’s inevitable losses just not so much we suffer light blindness and end up lost anyway. So maybe that’s why the occasional painted cloud: a small amount of reflected light, map direction up, just every once in a while.

Yes, just another impossible light, just another exceptional journey.