Chained to a Cloud

By Peter Bowden

They said he was chained to a cloud, and the phrase sounded wrong at first, like trying to nail fog to a fence. But it fit him. He walked through his days with a faint upward pull in his chest, as if something just above his head kept tugging gently, insistently, toward a brighter altitude. His feet knew the language of sidewalks and gravel, of chores and hours and obligations, yet his thoughts drifted higher, snagging on bits of sky the way burrs cling to denim. The chain was light, almost merciful, but it never let him forget it was there.

The cloud was not soft the way people imagined. It carried weight, memory, hope, half-finished prayers, old songs heard once through a summer window. Sometimes it darkened without warning, swelling with weather he could not name. Other times it thinned to a pale veil, barely there, and he felt almost free. Still, the chain held. It hummed faintly, like a wire in the wind, reminding him that wonder always exacts a small cost: attention. To look up meant risking the stumble below.

At night, when the world finally loosened its grip, the cloud drifted lower, close enough to touch. It smelled faintly of rain and warm dust and the electricity before a storm. He would lie awake and feel the chain soften, not breaking but bending, allowing a little give. In those moments he understood the bargain he had made without knowing it; some people are tethered to the ground, others cut loose entirely, but he was bound to possibility itself.

And so he lived that way, suspended between weight and lift, learning the quiet skill of balance. The cloud never carried him away, and the chain never let him fall. Together they taught him this: that imagination is not escape, but a kind of gravity turned inside out, a force that holds you here by reminding you there is always something just above you, waiting to be reached.

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