..

I am on an airplane.  It’s not in the air.  So I guess it’s more of a groundplane, or
a tarmacplane.  It’s not just me.  There are twenty-two rows, with four seats and an aisle.  No one sits in the aisle, but everyone seems really excited to stand in it.
I am sitting because I wore too-small shoes.  I saw them at the store and didn’t care that they weren’t in my size.  My love will make them fit.  

I adore you, can’t you tell?  Just try not to hurt me.

I am sitting, and there is a man in the aisle (of course), and his pocket is touching my cheek.  This pocket is empty. It is the most empty pocket I have ever seen.  It is so empty that something must be missing.  I want to tell the man that he lost his wallet, or his phone, or a deck of playing cards or cigarettes.  I want to tell the pocket to be brave.  It is his duty to tell the man, not mine.  My duty is to mind my own business.  

Our departure is delayed.  All the groundplanes are becoming airplanes before our many eyes.  We feel so abandoned, collectively.  Please God, don’t let us be last.  If I can count to forty before that woman unlocks the bathroom door, then we will be next.  1, 2, 40.  “I hear there are high winds”, someone mentions.  High winds, the delay, we are doomed.  Maybe the man with the empty pocket is the only man who can steer us to safety, but he lost his keys, or whatever the safety-tool looks like, and now we are all doomed.  I should have said something to him.  

I read somewhere, or heard it on the television, or whatever, that you should always wear clean underwear in case you are in an accident.  That way, when the paramedic, surely handsome and capable, sees you bloodied, but virginal and clean, he will make the extra effort to save your life so that he might ask you out when you aren’t so bloody.  But if you are going to wear the clean panties, why not wear a matching bra?  Doesn’t that say “future husband, I am organized.  I will clean your home and keep all the silverware in tidy piles.  I will make love to you and then arrange the pillows so no one knows, only you and I.”

I am not wearing a matching bra and panties.  And I have an open blister on the heel of my right foot.  When the plane goes down, as it inevitably will, my not-future husband will pick through my bones and ashes and say “oh, this one wont do, look at this heel, look at this bra.  She belongs in the pile of cannot-be-saved.  She is human remains.”  Only my worst parts remain.

From now on I will walk.  No one gets killed walking.  It’s always vehicles and machines and oceans and explosions.  The news reporter never says “tragedy at the corner of 5th and Blanchet, man found dead at 4:30pm by local butcher, cause of death: walking."  I will be walking in my too-small shoes of course, but why should I care?  No one will know, no one but me.  And maybe my commitment to keeping us alive, me and the shoes, will show the shoes exactly how much they mean to me.

I am breathing for both of us, give me a little more space.