Cloud

I am traveling in a pressurized cabin, through the deepest, most bitter hours of night. The overhead light gives off a dim reminder of birth. The plane shakes, no one is really asleep. I turn the page of the Marquis de Sade’s The 120 Days of Sodom. Halfway in and the words are already a blur. Or maybe shock value bores me in the end. I can’t say.

Below my feet, storms wrack the uncaring oceans, gray and without end. We are suspended between worlds, hanging in the early morning air. I think of Lockerbie, TWA 800, and other doomed voyages. I look around me at the pale faces of men and women, imagine them reprinted on recycled newspaper; images beamed across the Northeast. Let it end in a flash.

The music is at war with itself, fighting the urge to be beautiful. Voices trip over each other, there is too much to be said, but not enough worth saying. Reach out your hand, feel your way through this cluttered room. You know the objects and you will not fall.