Flight Risk
In the
suspended
anemone of your body
you have taken the middle seat.
The little circle to your right is an
almost moon, a metal arm fractioning
it in halves. You have all that you need for
eight hours of sustenance in a small bracket,
even an aided ability to breathe. Spilling your guts
is permitted, so long as you do it privately. Food
and water will be portioned out periodically as a
reminder that life is going on 30000 feet beneath you.
Just sit back and relax.
The email notification is a yellow
apparition telling you something’s not right. You
dreamed of this: a life lived well, a life fuelled by perspective.
You now have distance and height, but what you really want is to touch something, a reminder
that beyond the expanse of wings, over the horizon, you will not be haunted by the desperate choice you made. The tears spill mercilessly, with a life of their own. You hope the arm rest separates you neatly enough. You drink the sadness in stray cups balanced on your knee.
Your wrists tangle in your charging wires. Your earphones drown the metal ricochet of your heart.
A contradiction: you dream of flying to the point of distraction, your sole tingling.
In ancient history, we lived oceans apart, transported because
some higher god or man swallowed us in his mouth. At the
immigration counter, a brown man will ask why you left &
you ask it right back. You will touch your father’s hand
over security barricades and hope to touch it again
in a year. At some point the dreadful bones of
aloneness should settle quietly in your chest.
A girl you never kissed will force your
throat in a deadlock, saying how brave
you were to leave, and you will choke
to stop grief from welling in
your mouth. Leave space for it
in seat [ ]; your head between
your knees. At seventeen, you
find out that with distance,
someone could
die and you would be
none the wiser, split by
distance, a silly decision
you made to always be a
flight risk.
by Stuti Pachisia