Altitude

A woman sits next to me in this soon to be airborne cylinder. She eats an apple and has expensive looking boots. Coffee was a poor choice before boarding. The energetic sweats can be hard to explain in close quarters. Takeoff pushes too much blood to the back of my head and I think I might explode. The ground falls away and all I see are soft drops of amber light absorbed into a black paper towel, arranged in neat squares and rectangles. Or maybe the lights are under water, or ice. Impossible to discern their origin--just observe the result of their illumination. The glow, the product of their purpose. But now we’re so high, concealed by elevation, and the needles of light are swallowed by an impossible distance.
She hides the apple core between the seats and I think I’m in love again. She closes her eyes, to sleep or to pretend to sleep.
I can see other lights in their holding patterns, little orbs drawing tedious ellipses in the sky. The ground gets closer. Closer. And I wonder what will be the last thing I see. What will be the final image burned into my retinas, still visible through opaque eyelids.
Altitude is marriage--power and aerodynamics. Engines and fuel. Maybe the lights below are fluorescent drops of paint or Predator blood.
Lost contact, swallowed whole. Depth / Darkness. Columns of broken bones scratch at the swollen bellies of clouds, invisible when it’s as dark as it is now. Catch the stewardess counting change with her fingers, the man across the aisle mixing Jack and Coke from tiny plastic containers. The same awkward conversations and the smell of many humans packed close together. Baby cries. Proximity. Altitude.