i. on our first date, you ask if i want to learn how to fly. guiding my trembling fingers over the yoke, you introduce me to an old friend, a mechanical anatomy you’ve had memorized since you were sixteen. the first time your hands leave the two of us alone, you watch my terrified eyes and laugh. flying is the easy part, you say.
ii. there was a time when explorers would name new lands after people they loved instead of themselves. somehow i’ve never found that idea comforting. it worries me that places out there exist that can wear my name better than i do. on nights when you’re gone, i spend hours trying to picture what an island looks like when it smiles.
iii. even as she was bathed in the icy blood of a dying vessel, rose sang a love song to the stars. when i think of romance, i think of hands that dissolve into air so that hearts have to sprout wings just to find each other on the way down. i think of ships of dreams and flying machines.
iv. these days, i have stopped waiting for the silhouettes of planes to paint demolition across the sunset. when i’m lonely, i play fleetwood mac records and spin around the apartment until i exorcize all the ghosts. i try to convince myself that when loving rhiannon, no one gets to win.
v.* on our last night, i ask you what the hardest part of being a pilot is. you unstitch your eyes from the cerulean-sewn skyline and look at me. *landing, you say. your hand feels warm in mine.