My father told my sister and I that if we jumped and missed the ground, we'd be flying
And God, I believed him
We spent hours on that trampoline
Wore ourselves silly,
Got jabs from all the pine needles lost to the mesh from acid rain
Not allowed to come into the house until we hosed our feet off

We upgraded our efforts
My father had a pickup truck that we loved,
And we had umbrellas for walking to school with
We tried every height we thought we could get away with no broken bones
And we came close, I landed on my neck once
Morphine in the hospital is sort of like flying
Best attempt we had at the time

When I turned 18, I bought a plane ticket
I had to apologize to my mother, because I never stopped running away
We lived in the valley, and I always saw the moutains which enclosed us as a challenge
But she built us a home, our imaginary flight a simple trick to keep us grounded
It worked for so long, and she held on to her family
So it's only fair. She's earned this apology-
But I've earned this air space
I worked for the money, and paid for this ticket,
A guarenteed four hours of nothing but simulated pressure and clouds obscuring city lines