american skies

How can you stand it? Those American skies just keep on going, clouds quilting out patterns that roll on to the edges of the earth. It hit me hard this time around, the casual bigness of America. The stretches of forest simply forgotten between the interstate and the row houses. The freeway interchanges piled several stories high, looping in knots before pulling out to dead straight lines that bolt for the horizon. And let’s not even start on the supermarkets, SUVs and waistlines. Ten days back in America and my head starts to unravel, so tightly wound to the stamp-sized apartments, the packed commuter trains, and a sky taut and dainty, barely able to hold all the humanity under it.