Flight DL364

Goose pimples cover my arms,
Salt flats bubbling under a scorching sun.
The rawness of recycled air pierces through my
Nostrils and escapes through undreaming eyes–
“Can I get anything for you?”
Just some ginger ale for me, thanks.

Next to me a carefully cut bob sleeps–
Nicholas Sparks suspended in her right hand.
Diagonal, there’s a businessman–thin as a
Rod, the grime of many hours in a crumpled
Business-suit and none in the arms of home
Sits, accumulates in the sallow beneath his eyes.

By the window, a girl reads,
Her eyebrows crumble and reconstruct themselves
Like footage of a falling building in reverse–
Worlds and words flitting by, etching themselves
On the careful plane of her porcelain
Hands.

We pass through mountains of condensed molecules,
The only place where silence still lives, alone.
On the film of glass is white noise–
The way the TV looks when the channel isn’t working.
Then blackness, as we break through the froth–
Then lights, winking from a concrete carpet of carefully manicured
Lawn.