helium balloons

p: fare well// flight to dublin, 11 PM

fare well

It is so big out there; these words
seem so little. Still, I will try to run
my fingers along the tresses
of the universe, braid the star stuff
and sea somethings into poetry.

See, this honeyed horizon melts
into sunrise. I am reading Morse code
in the wing-lights, hearing the soft echo
of existence strobe through the stratosphere.

This darkness, this quiet light,
swaddles me: an astral blanket
over our lonely bed. Tonight,
I will let the constellations knit
around me and kiss me
gentle good night.

flight to dublin, 11 pm

At some 33,000 feet above the dizzying drench of the Atlantic Ocean, globed by the dark cloth of night, I am occupying some hazy border between these vast, unknowable entities. My old opioid muses creep their static tendrils all over this lonely cabin. Their familiar lurch shivers through my heart valves. I am ready for this to pan out like a recurring dream-- everything is dim and hazy. My thoughts move much quicker than this sleep crawl; my escape window glimmers like an illusion. I brace myself for the swift, unwelcome reunion of wet eye and scratch throat. All of the night is scavenging the sky, the ocean; why not offer up my bones once more?

But the quiet whisper of sunlight as it seeps across the horizon. O, subtle hairline fracture of gold. O, crack of yolk along the spine of night. O, volcanic murmur in my bones: even at night, this world is spilling over with light.

----
shout out to the flight attendant that made me close the window and block out the most amazing view of the big dipper i've ever seen in my entire life because people were trying to sleep (but it wasn't even bright outside???) in other news, in the past 32 hours, i've gotten 30 minutes of sleep, cool.