I wanted to say hello on the plane, but
You flipped your hair and turned away
To stare out the window at the sinking sun.

Are you scared? I say as the scent of burned rubber fills the aircraft.
Just a little. The back of your head speaks over the engine’s scream.
Seatbelt lights flash on and we lurch to a start.

I’m scared too, I want to say. Not that you would care.
I’m frightened of heights, not being there but of falling.
We’re climbing rung by rung into thick air.

You won’t ask, but I feel like I’m in a submarine
And there’s a hole in the metal.
Try as I might, I just can’t find the leak.

I’m on a steel slab and the anesthesia is oil in the ocean
Of my mind. But a white coat holding a scalpel is all I see
I am still awake.

I whistle a tune when turbulence shakes us
And you throw me a glance.
You remind me of my late wife, I want to say.

I am afraid of an empty bed
And a blanket that barely covers my feet.
It smells too clean, I want to say.

I am terrified that this silver bird will keep flying
Out of orbit and we’ll just be another star in the sky,
A solar flare lost in the sea of fireworks.

I am the prince of worry, and the king has absconded.
I calm myself by singing, like thrushes speaking in the wind.
You’d hate the sound of this bird’s croak.

You don’t care about a stranger’s worries.
I’d ramble on like tumbleweed, dancing down an empty road
Until I would stick on a cactus whose thorns would never let me go.

You wouldn’t care to hear that when we descend,
I will rent a car and drive through the mountains
Instead of walking the trails, under the naked sky.

When I reach the mountain’s peak, I would get down on one knee
But this time, to kiss old life goodbye
And mix an urn’s ashes with snowflakes.

# # #

Ross Rodgers is a graduate student and teacher at Mississippi State University. He writes both short stories and poetry, primarily in narrative free verse.

Photo: Raisa Milova