Please: No WiFi on Airplanes.

A Poem.

Window seat, cabin lights out, scratchy blanket, teary eyes.

I’m crying in a small room with two hundred strangers, but nobody’s watching

And if they are, they don’t think anything of it. Funny, that.

Paper, pen, a rickety tray table and a pointed yellow light. I am boxed in.

Now: time to let out all those feelings I keep buried under to-do lists and social calendars.

Now: time to think those thoughts that are clouded by the rational, the reasonable, the convenient, and the known.

Extricating dry, cracked doubts and webbed questions from between heavy layers of padded comfort: the tears are merely a byproduct of the process.

An arc flashes on my screen, labeled cities in far off countries (not always the most obvious ones). A day undulates into a night, half of an infinity. 36,000 feet: a little distance gives much needed perspective.

No blinking red circles screaming for attention. A baby is crying a few seats ahead, but earplugs can block out that noise.

No resorting to scrolling through newsfeeds, staring dazed and intoxicated. I look out into the dark: look up, look down, it all looks the same. I turn back, Pandora, to face my box.

Pen to paper, writing methodically, cautiously, at first, then frenzied. The infinity shifts, we cross the arc, lights on, seatbelts on, we descend. Nothing is solved, but I am newly resolved. My fears have taken form, I see them through tired eyes, and there is hope.

A short idle moment in the sky. My last refuge.