Long flights and careful words

Look with me and we'll mistake the clouds for complacency

and we'll see ballerinas and piggy banks

but we'll know nothing more than vapor 

and the face you wish you saw was always nothing more than vapid.

The floor rolls beneath us, 
but we'll pretend the turbulence on the plane

is worse than the shaking in our plans.

They told me flying is risky,

but no one gets hurt unless they fall.

My mom asked me when the last time was,

and I said 6 years because that's the answer she wanted to hear.

I didn't say that I've always been up here,

and I didn't tell her that the world looks softer when you can't touch it.

The green and the purple give way to the blue and the white 
and then I'm seeing the sun from above the mundane.

An inhale is less than an exhale when it's supposed to matter,

but breathing really only matters to my blood.

I've always been alive in the most basic way,

but dreams are more complicated than anatomy

and I've never had more than a passing interest in science.

The airport is for people-watching,

but my mind is for introspection,

so I think and think
and think.

I think about the way the clouds look so innocent,

but the piggy bank is having an affair with the ballerina while he's married to the hippo,

and the frog tried to hit on the spaceship last night and now he's soaking his shirt to get alcohol out of the threads.

The snow that falls here might outshine my soul, 

but the icebergs in the sky might disagree.

Popping ears will tell you you're changing,

but it's worth getting closer to the shapes our eyes have always wished for,
imperfect enough that we can say that we know.
We know.


--Erin