far back a bottomless sky of stacked cloud floors climbing up forever, each layer lit a different hour of night, slow birds circling between them.
in the middle pajama clad sleepers falling gently upward past the clouds, one reading a book on the way, one pouring tea that pours up, one holding an umbrella opened the wrong way that is working anyway.
up close one bare foot and a trailing blanket corner in close view breaking through the nearest cloud, a lost slipper and three feathers hanging in the air beside it.
the layers, back to front · one pair of hands each
