How much can you hold? 

Clouds--shifting and defying gravity, solitary, exclusionary, standing in for gods and dictating the mood of those below, foretelling destruction and amusing bored spectators.  How much can you hold, meaning or water? Before you break,...or maybe just shift, defiant again, until you let it all fall, all that you were holding, down to the earth again.  

I smash the plates, cups, bowls, whatever. I smash the porcelain, high held stuff, in frustration.  The smooth texture leaves my grasp, my fingertips, and falls.  (Or I wanted to- you know, hypothetical) Instant release or regret, take your pick.  Or it falls, the glass falls all on its own, tipped over when no one was watching, or because no one was watching, the glass tips itself, just to make a sound.  And I turn around.  Or I step on it, spread salt underneath, step gingerly, fearfully.  I jump on it now; its strength, unexpected, is not what you want, is it?

And you pick up the pieces and put it back together.  Something can be --will be done with it anyways.  How much can you hold...now?

My cupped fingers run out of water before they reach my lips and I'm oh so parched.

The cracks are what I really want.  They look like lightning, (like the kind that would flash in the sky on hot, windy, dusty, fire sky nights while I walked to the corner to get the mail, or if i'm being honest, was calle out, drawn out, the charge in the air too tempting to pass up, too delicious, my feet couldn’t stay still, tripped of thier own accord).  They look like lightning, the cracks; like roots, like veins- inside, outside, above and below.  I break myself to make myself, beautiful.  Reveal what’s inside, and put it back together, making what's inside visible to the out.

My cupped hands can’t hold anything.  This is really such an impractical way to hydrate oneself.

What was, --what I wanted to be is torn to shreds, crumbled, cracked, can’t hold water anymore.  But keep on trying, right.  There’s nothing better to do.  You don’t have anything better to do, do you?  How much can you hold? of those clouds on your shoulders, will break your back, --could break your back if you let them.  

And then there’s this...this part too, the ground beneath your feet.

I broke the large red vessels down to rehydrate, recycle, reuse, reform the dirt for, at the time, unknown purposes; but liked how it looked that way.  Like little red mountains, a moon cratered terrain, a desert landscape.  Like the mountains I knew and never thought I would miss.  But those mountains were purple I remember.  And felt the same under my feet, sharp rocks, I crossed wincing all the way when I was in possession of perfectly functional shoes.  Defiant, for no reason or purpose.  So I left it.  There, in piles below the clouds holding water.  

The theme, you decide, there are many.  Pick or choose.  How much water can your leaky fingers hold? The theme- futility, the theme-broken, the theme-repaired, the theme-filtering, the theme-stained, the theme-earth and air and earth again, the theme-erosion/decay, the theme-human in controll?, the theme-change-again and again.  The theme, as numerous as the clouds.  

Right now the sky is empty and blue.