76 brief views of Cleveland: #5

5.

Near the airport, there's fairly clear lines-of-sight in all directions. Maybe it's just a trick my mind plays on me each day--getting out of the office and into my car the skies feel relatively open compared to how they'll seem when I get back out of my car near the apartments along the lake shore. Maybe it's something more than an optical illusion, though. Or maybe I'm just tired.

What I know it means is that it's not that I can see a storm cloud brewing to the east early Thursday evening that surprises me--it's something about how the cloud looks awfully dark, the fact that it's almost tangible, as touchable as smoke off a bonfire. Maybe I'm just tired; maybe it's been raining all day. Clouds, in Cleveland, generally fail to surprise. I drive and forget.

Later I learn about the building that was being renovated that burned to the ground. Someone inside made a mistake, and miles away, someone else mistook the results for something else entirely. Something closer to flowers than fire.