A Sacred Gap in the Clouds

I spend my nights in the factory, working for a negligible amount of money. Just barely enough to keep myself and my family afloat.

The city is clouded with pollution, pollution from factories like mine that give power to the bigger, richer cities. Everyone walks about with masks on to try and save their lungs, and even during the daytime, the sky is dull and dark. One can barely see an arms length out.

My hours at the factory are long and the longest break I have is just a few minutes long, enough time to eat a sandwich. Usually around midnight- if its not raining- I climb up the steel roof access ladder, and though the air is dirty, and ash sometimes falls on my food, I can at least be alone and escape the steam, clanging, and chatter.

Sometimes, if I am very lucky, the thick clouds part. I find this happens the most often during those windy nights after a rainstorm.

I feel like they part just for me, the only person up on the roof. The sky opens up and shows me that the stars still exist, that they aren't just a story or something that other people get to enjoy. Other people who don't work at a factory in a polluted city.

Sometimes it only lasts for less than a minute, but I treasure it all the same.

Those few minutes of stars every so often are what remind me that there is more than steam, steel, and poison in the air.