When I was younger I wondered where birds were flying to, what the whole point was, and then I figured they were just flying away from something. Outer space, the Other, she probably loves birds. She wears the sky we see like an opaque veil; she can't see out of it. she doesn't want to look at us. When we send our rockets breaking out through baby blue visor, she can't bear to look at our ugly fishbowl faces, so the Other tries to do nothing harder than choke us out, than to make an example so that we stop trying so hard to ignore her mask, and we send men out in little reflective armors and fishbowl helmets and she gets her hands around their throats but just can't squeeze, she turns their bloods blue and stretches their spines, but regardless when they come home they are heroes, role models, and then more will follow in their footsteps. But the Other, the outer, she loves birds because they're happy to just fly along the surface of the sky, of her mask. They're happy to be so high without any reason to be there, having never considered the beyond. That's what clouds for, for her to whisper sweet little songs to the birds and keep them healthy and watch each of their lives play out, because she loves them and they have never given her a reason to try and suffocate one.
Jon Recinos