“The sky” began my mother while fondling the medallion around her neck, “is what watches your back when no one else will. When the sun is setting, and your hope is going down like the last rays of light, Kiss the sky.”
“Whatever.” I sighed loudly as I walked away.

That was the last time I saw my mom.
I say the last, because her face was too mangled to even identify her (if it hadn’t been for her wallet, they wouldn’t have been capable of it) before the funeral.

They say it was a suicide; because no one can get in and out of a room locked from the inside.
They say that she had become dissatisfied with life, her coworkers proffered to the police officers, that her daughter had taken the excitement out of life for her – But I know better.

I carry her picture with me as I search every night; as I slowly sift through the explosively dangerous criminal population, like volcanic ash, gradually suffocating the world.
And I do, I kiss the sky.
And I imagine that the red clouds in the sky
are her,
kissing me back.