I love looking at highways from airplanes,
They snake across the blotchy, flat earth
And slither into the endless blue haze,

I wonder what they find there,
Is it love or death?
Or old friends?
Or happiness?

Perhaps, their happiness
Is in the curly-q designs
They scrawl like ancient script

I trace it,
Running my fingers over three-pane glass,
Until they disappear

And the clouds look like fingers and hands,
Reaching out to touch me,
Expanding with every breath I take,
Calling me down to the river,
Calling me down to the trees

But my happiness is in the single, breathless moment of take-off,
The moment I feel my heart lurch,
And bang into the something inside me pushing me forward,
Into the illusory blue