thirty-two thousand feet

It gives a whole new sensation to the term 'head in the clouds.' Knowing that everything below is dreary and problematic and so utterly complicated yet here we are: Flight # 1903, flying above the barrier that at least right now is keeping the sun from touching down. It's a new kind of great divide. A real distance between us that someone, some time was paid to measure. That family and friends can track as it grows. It's so easy to forget, especially in these treacherous times, that a sky could be so blue. The clouds are a thick solid entity all their own, today an arctic sea and the ripples and wrinkles and dents further the images of glaciers in my mind. I'm ready to dive in, I'm not afraid of the depths or of what may lay ahead, below or behind. There is no icy chill, only an inviting softness that could lull me straight to sleep. All I see out these tiny oval windows is a bed of freshly picked cotton balls, stretched and folded, beneath the same perfect sky we'd nap together under late in to the days of our summers when nothing was so permanent. The birds and humming mowers and clicks of sprinklers were enough of a lullaby to convince us that all was well. We could rest easy and the world would continue as she always had and when we'd wake nothing would need fixing.

I could stay in this inbetween and watch this cloudy sea and feel this calm and I could sleep here. I could smile when the flight attendants give me more plane shaped cracker bags than I could ever eat and when the proud and wrinkled man next to me slips me his, just in case, for later. And when he says a warm congratulations I can say thank you and be thankful and wonder at their kindness which comes so easily. I am comforted to think as many have said, this too shall pass. I'm not branded with an instigation to hate. I can share a genuine smile when he offers me his economy sized bag of m&ms, which he's chosen to pair with a small plastic cup of chardonay. I can understand how we hold so tightly to our pains and our afflictors, how easily we can let our hearts be weighed and dragging along. But what I've finally understood is how we let go.

Even still it's amazing how we can let go but others may still hold fast and refuse to lighten their grip and that's what creates the pits.

And I can't help but feeling like I'm running away, like I should have been stronger and I should've been able to stay.