Airplane Triptych

I.

one night I look up to see a plane overhead
a distant dot among stars 
a thing made of eyes and wings
full up with twinkling half-asleep daydreams

I wonder if someone, halfway to wherever
happened to glance down at
a glowing mountain town

tomorrow, when the sky is turned to golden honey
and I’m suspended in a purplish grey
I’ll peek through my pinhole window
to scan the tectonic creases for
landlines and fractal highways
always returning 
to twisting turning 
suburban 
dead ends

II.

piercing the clouds like 
the morning sun through your blinds
I woke up too early

I woke up too early but 
took off too late
to take notes on the way
your face was written in the sky

stuck in this plane full of pencils
lights that blink and stare
feeling claustrophobic while time is stopped 
drinking recycled air

dry your eyes
because a self-portrait is only
what you make of it

watch the world shrink 5 miles below
it can fit in the palm of your hand 
you can smear it on a canvas
watch it run down your arm 
in little droplets along the window
in gale-force winds that shake 
your pen suspended over hazy pages

underneath these cotton-cloud shapes 
are sheets of orange-white lights
gridlocked static signals and 
headache hangover voicemails
from flyover state, great lakes, and
ink-soaked page turns

III.

rack focus rain streak window pane 
parallax cloud layering staccato synth ear pops
panned left to right in altitude pressure changes
creaky adjustment settling into a new shape

I’m not sitting here, but in the next seat over
I’m sitting across the aisle from me 
spinning away into a spiral
curling into myself compressed to a point
sinking into myself thinking to a fault:

death
is a momentary reflection
magnified

what happens after? 
there’s an empty space where 
you would stand, a step to the left

I’m deaf in one ear now
ringing feedback 
losing signal fidelity
a hazy crackle 
a faint hissing whisper
saying why, or why not