The airplane is the epitome of safety, order and restraint.
Everything designed to induce calm and minimize contact.
Other passengers apologize for touching me, ashamed of the slightest nudge that briefly bridges a gap.
But I want to be jostled; I want their fingerprints on me.
I look out the window and all the clouds are fucking.
Couples glomming together,
Threesomes tumbling through the atmosphere,
Some of them on dragons.
And I want out of the capsule.
I want to go where it is wet and uncertain.
Inside the window, we are rows of silent worlds, arranged like eggs.
We acknowledge each other like the blurred faces in the periphery of dreams.
We are in transition.
We are being taken.
No one mentions our mutual fate, as though words would cause the worlds to crack and burst, blending together like the clouds outside.
We have nothing to hold but our breath.
I am gripped by a spiritual shuddering, caught inside my own wake.
If I would resist less, make my soul an aetheric arrow, flow upstream,
I would find Me.
A Me surfing the crest of Time.
A Me moving so fast it strips the paint off stars.
A Me that is already There because it itself is the destination.
A Me with liquid, hungry boundaries.
I would embrace that Me, pull its lips to my ear and finally hear what I’ve been trying to say all this time.
But right now I am a pail of water in a steel box:
Passenger 10C on a carefully prescribed arc,
Moving faster than I ever have while sitting completely still.
Three buttons give me the power to summon
A tiny sun, a tiny wind, or a tiny repose.
To see, to feel and to dream with the seatbelt securely fastened, small and safe.
Hidden somewhere ahead of me is a
Flickering matrix of dials, maintaining my fate.
They taught me that complex machines were required to yoke destiny.
Without buttons and dials the plane could land in Xanadu, missiles could land on the Civil War, and I could become anyone.
The gauges were necessary to measure progress.
So I bought into the buttons and the dials.
And I bought them with my blood.
An umbilical snapped, memory faded and I unlearned that ultimate potential, life in all directions, chaos, is easy.
Anywhere and Anywhen slide loose behind a thin amniotic membrane where my body used to breathe water and my soul used to breathe…used to breathe…
Where my soul just used to Breathe.
Outside the window, the clouds form the angular logos of their new corporate sponsors.
The people flying the plane weren’t just taking us,
They were taking everything.
Frantically, I reach out and press a fourth button I hadn’t noticed before and I summon a tiny point of contact.
A woman arrives and asks “Can I help you?”
I say “You can do more than that: You can get your hands dirty with me. Get me under your fingernails. You can stop lying and expecting me to lie back. You can drink my tongue and every other part of me and I will do the same for you. We can walk naked and give everything we see a new name. And don’t apologize if you end up killing me; I was made to explode and make a mess and stick to everything.
“Barring that, you can show me where they’ve hidden my sun, my wind and my dreams. I’ve checked way too much baggage onto this flight, so I know they can’t be here. While you’re at it, you can take back all the dials because I’m not measuring up, I’m going Up.
“Barring that I’ll proceed to one of the four exits (the nearest of which may be behind me) and get off the fucking plane.”
MAYDAY EJECT EJECT MAYDAY EJECT EJECT
…
She sits down next to me.
Her hair is not red.
Somehow that’s okay.
She pulls out a dog-eared copy of The Little Prince.
I know what pages she has marked.
“First time flowing?” she asks.
“Yes, yes it is.”
She holds my hand and my heart although they both stain her.
We’re going to slide up and through the plane now,” she says.
I nod.
There is a splash.
I stop holding on to my breath.
