New York City, November 24, 2015

★★★ The morning clouds could neither control nor yield the sky but held on, diffusing the light to white-gray. A fire drill sent the children spilling out of the music school: the third graders bundled in their heavy coats, the middle schoolers hunched up without. Down by the Flatiron the sky was clear; the clouds that had been uptown were still there, over the shoulder, but the sky was bigger than the island after all. Sunlit stonework and the blue behind it lay reflected in the face of the phone on the desk by the window.