A man lying down

I feel it has been quite some time since I posted a story, so today I bring you a really short one about a man who's really tired and lonesome. Hope you enjoy!

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Posted by u/campogirl on Reddit

A man is lying down by the cloud flow.

Clouds and clouds pass by, busy with rain, or blizzards, or looking like certain things they see down on earth, shapeshifting to loiter and pass the time.

The man only looks down to the ground, slowly drifting with the lazy clouds. He longs and waits without paying attention to what he sees.

He flies over continents, soars past the lakes and trees and little animals, and nobody looks up to see him. The expression on his face remains unchanged, but occasionally a draft shakes him violently and turns him around, making him face the deep blue of the sky or the black vacuum of space.

Sometimes he watches the moon, sometimes only stars without count.

But sometimes the sun's up there.

Then he makes the only move he seems capable of performing, for it is the only one I've seen him make so far — he turns around to avoid being blinded by the sun. But if he doesn't feel like turning, he just closes his eyes until the sun goes away.

He has never turned the other way around, even when the sea makes a calm mirror for the sun.

He always closes his eyes for the shining sea, even on the nights when there's a full moon.

Once I saw him cry when he opened his eyes and stared at the reflection of the moon and stars on the flat, deep face of the endless blue. I thought it was truly a beautiful sight, and I must confess I cried for a while too.

I cried over the sea and the stars blurred.

I was crying when the man stopped his salty rain, still heavy and swollen with tears, and I was crying when he closed his eyes again.

I cried for another while, watching the man with his eyes closed.

I didn’t know why I was crying at this point. I think it was because somehow I knew that the man was not sleeping. Somehow, I knew he never really slept. Every time he had his eyes closed, I knew he was awake. I thought about my own sleep, inexistent too. That used to make me really sad, and I cried every night.

Now, I rarely cry.

Sometimes when I cry, the man gets sick. I know it's because of my crying, but I can’t do anything to stop it when it starts. It just goes on and on until I run out of tears.

The rest of the time I feel like that man looks.

Calm, yet restless. As if he was in a hurry to get somewhere, but also as if he knew that he was never going to make it on time.

But I really hope gets there...