Flight Rules
3 min readApr 14, 2016
- The plane will not leave without you.
- The clouds will remember the way you poked holes through them long after you’ve forgotten all about it. They’ll find you years later, in Detroit or Rome or Lawrence, Kansas and know your face.
- Two flight attendants will seem at odds and for good reason. One called the other snooty. The other said he could tell he grew up in a loveless family. You ignore their quibbling and try to scrub orange juice from your sleeve with a wet napkin which just leaves little napkin bits and makes it worse, until you give up completely.
- Somewhere over Mexico City you will awake from a white noise half-nap to a tapping on your window. A man is there, holding on for dear life. “Hello my name is Wesley! From your bank! Your bank statement is now ready! Have you gotten our emails?!”
- Crouching below your seat, you will break the rules and let loose the inflatable life vest. “I just want to be absolutely ready,” you will say with a big smile. The passenger next to you will frown and ring the flight attendant to intervene.
- You will drift off again somewhere over the French Pyrenees and remember your lover with broken wrists wrapped around your ankles begging “5 more minutes, just 5 more minutes.” You will cautiously oblige. When you do, a cloud of ancient dust will settle upon the scene. It is, maybe, making out with an unremarkable amount of tongue. It is, maybe, an hour of inconclusive dry humping. It is never emotional couch sex. It is never fucking.
- Below you the night will be suddenly interrupted by giant blossoms of light and radiation, throwing up hot white clouds of debris in every direction. Your captain clears his throat: “The nuclear stockpiles were detonated, oh my god, it’s actually happened.” Your fellow passengers will ooh and ahh, gathering at the windows. “But we planned for this, we always knew this was a possibility. We’ll head to the moon now. We’ll start the world over there, see what happens.”
- At an indescribable orbit the flight attendants will push the drink cart down the aisle with your niece in tow. You will succumb to the weight of it. No fear or doubt or longing, no scars, no blood, no bruises across her smooth unbroken neck. You will stutter through joyous, silly tears “You’re coming with us! This was always the plan, wasn’t it. Your mother and I talk every other Sunday. She still has the most vivid, surreal dreams about you. We miss you.”
- You will land on a tarmac holding 4 inches of water. You will exit the plane with aching shoulder blades and the unshakable dread of looking behind you.
- Knowing this, you will sprint down the runway as fast as you can, chasing a plane taking off, screaming “I know you! I’ve always known you!” Screaming “You know me too! You’ve known me forever!” You’ll watch the passengers whisper things to one another as their plane ascends. Somehow you will ascend, too.
