I could see nothing but her eyes
Yet only for a second or two were they still.
In those moments where the cardboard cut-out
Hollywood in our heads would have us clinging to each other
With a kiss to last several lifetimes should this one end
We found no terminal peace.
If we’d tried to kiss we’d likely have broken each other’s teeth
As our jaws jerked up, hammered down
Rattled sideways and struggled not to bite our own tongues.
The sky seemed to retreat from us rather than we falling out of it
But we plummetted and the oxygen masks
Fell upon us like imperilled willows
As our lungs crushed against our ribs
And our stomachs invaded our butterflied pelvic cores
And I tried to fight off the thought of that downy skin
Punctured by its own bones
Skull shattering like a soft-boiled egg
And nameless internals spattering all over
The rushy margins and bestubbled stalks
Of whatever country lay below.
Probably in some remote area where the services could not reach
And weeks after, an exhausted helicopter crew
Would find us nibbled away to calcium by capybaras
And would later tell their story to a mortified media
In a tongue whose plangent pity the AI subtitles would dessicate.
Some passengers vomited at the thought of their dehumanisation
But their service-ready paper bags remained
unsullied
And their cellphones undialled with that one last call.
“Ladies and gentlemen, the captain
Has switched off the “fasten seatbelts” sign
And you are now free to resume those
Existences you reflected upon as meaningless
A few moments ago. We ask that you celebrate
Your deliverance with humility
And consideration for your fellow passengers
And do not utilize the toilets for copulation.
The Blessed Home Secretary has proscribed the Mile-High Club
As a terrorist organization and any unwarranted
Grunted emanations from the closets
Will be met with the full force of the law.”
Meekly, she returned to her crossword
And I to my ring-bound camera manual
And we wordlessly rewound our unfulfilled fantasies.
Apparently we’d only dropped nine feet
Which isn’t the brink of doom when you’ve thirty-seven thousand to spare.
But what a kiss that never was.
.
Stephen A. Linstead
.