By Katy Masuga

Salut au monde! As expected this time of year and this time of evening and this place in the world, the sky is an incredible ivory blue and, yes, the clouds themselves are a luminescent pink strung across the vast yet controlled open space, encapsulated on the edges by centuries- and even millennia-old neighborhoods, like cotton candy pulled between sticky fingers or even just stretched cotton itself, in the way that it floats whimsically atop fields drifting with the breeze falling and rising and leaving parts of its body behind, spreading itself interminably among the numerous dark, dry stems and burnt, crackling leaves.