long-distance
there is turbulence over the Rockies again
I grip my plastic cup so tightly it bends
and hope that this red merlot hits faster at 30,000 feet,
while I beg my body to relax into the softness of the clouds.
I left New York in darkness this time, quietly without notice,
to chase the sun westbound,
but instead of an idyllic sunset over a Midwestern cornfield,
the pilot says he’s never seen a lightning storm like this in his thirty years of flying,
“Enjoy the show, folks.”
I sink lower in my seat,
I’m going to need more merlot and music to distract me.
I think about how my grandma once told me that the airlines used to play that famous Tony Bennett song during takeoff,
so I scroll through my playlists desperate for solace
until Bennett’s voice battles with the unsettling airplane sounds
“I’ve been terribly alone and forgotten in Manhattan,” he sings, with a gentleness that alleviates anxiety as quickly as it arises
“My love waits there in San Francisco”
the thought of your arms around me in a few hours calms me into the clouds,
I pretend it’s 1962 and I am a love-drunk artist,
brave like Bennett for chasing the sun,
and I imagine that lightning strikes with love,
cutting through a giant sequoia in Yosemite, forming the tree of protection,
as we sit on the cool earth, below its bark belly,
our hands intertwining like roots, our stories weaving into one.
We perform a ritual of selflessness,
and express our willingness to take on the pain of another,
to carry the weight of their sadness,
to provide stillness in the chaos of their anxieties,
to share in their joy,
and to glow with them in their happiness.
I try to capture the storm in a picture, but instead, catch my reflection in the window,
I notice a tiny crack in the glass, as each time zone fades into the next,
the thundercloud disappearing in the distance like a fleeting memory.
I miss the west when I’m in the east and the east when I’m in the west
because you always miss the place you are not in
when you live in limbo and straddle two separate lives,
so we continue this six-hour ritual
to preserve our own,
knowing that no matter where we land,
together we feel at home.
