Fugitive Skies

By Pierakis Pieri

age 6

The first idea came in the shape of a cloud

that looked like a door.

I ran to tell someone—

but by the time I pointed,

it was just sky.

I learned:

some things disappear

the moment you try to share them.

age 12

My pockets were full of ideas

scribbled in the backs of notebooks—

planets no one had named yet,

games that made no sense unless you were me.

They never made it to morning.

Sleep is a thief.

So is shame.

age 17

I fell in love with a sentence

I never got to say.

It burned my throat—

a summer storm held too long

beneath the tongue.

It lived in the silence

between the songs I made her listen to.

She never asked.

I never told.

That idea lives in her now, I think,

a ghost she might misname as a feeling.

age 25

The ideas came faster—

on buses, in showers,

while forgetting someone else’s name.

I chased them with apps and voice notes

and late-night scribbles on receipts.

But when I looked back,

they made no sense.

Hieroglyphs from a self

already gone.

age 33

My child asked,

"Where do dreams go if you don’t tell them?"

I almost answered.

But I saw the idea perched on her shoulder,

listening.

It would fly if I spoke too soon.

Instead, I said,

“Tell me yours first.”

She did.

And the idea stayed.

age 48

Ideas wait in the rain.

Each drop is a syllable.

If you stand still long enough,

you’ll be soaked in

a language that never learned

to dry.

I stopped running for shelter.

I let the sky’s wet ink

blur everything I thought I knew.

Some days, I just walked

with my face to the storm.

age 65

I found an old box—

notes, napkins, nonsense.

So many fugitive thoughts,

half-broken wings.

I laughed.

Then I wept.

Then I saw—

one had returned.

Not exactly as I’d written it,

but truer.

In faded blue ink,

Time had remembered

By Pierakis Pieri