Where the Sky Stands Tall

 Where the Sky Stands Tall

Astronaut Alice stood on the edge of a red rock bluff, the land unfurling before her like a worn and holy story—layer after layer of canyon, mesa, and wind-carved stone.

But it was the sky that held her still.

Above her, clouds billowed hundreds of feet high—cathedrals of vapor, wild and weightless. They rose without effort, towering and soft, glowing at the edges where sunlight passed through like stained glass.

Alice opened her helmet for a moment, letting the desert air kiss her face.

“They don’t build like this where I’m from,” she whispered.

The clouds moved slowly, reshaping themselves moment by moment—never fixed, yet never less than whole.

She watched as one great column unraveled into mist, only to rise again in a different shape.

“They’re not trying to hold anything,” she thought. “They just become what they’re meant to become.”

She had always thought strength looked like standing firm. But here—here was strength that drifted and danced. Strength that changed and rose anyway.

Alice sat down on the warm rock, the earth solid beneath her, the sky alive above.

“The land teaches me how to stand,” she thought. “But the sky… the sky teaches me how to let go.”

She stayed a while longer, watching the clouds become and unbecome, over and over again.

And for the first time, that felt like enough.