A Pilot and His Flea

Writing at Low Tide

Photo by The New York Public Library on Unsplash

I’m tired of not sprouting roots. Tired of forever feeling like black smog that can’t be reached to clean. I’m tired of this diet of increasingly barer ankles and pizza grease on my fingertips, inside my bellies, under my eyelids when I sleep. Of chasing home when I’m looking at a stranger, only to have them look away. Of not knowing when and whether I’ll make it. Of feeling proud and shamefaced both at once when somebody calls me by my Christian name. I thought I was a crow, but in time, I learned I’m nothing but a stinking petrol-bomb. At least, I got the color right.

Pilots know the precise altitude at which you’ve gotta fly to stop seeing anyone down here. Yet, they agree to come back anyway — how? Back before, when the world was less smog-clogged, birds used to be a fine metaphor. But now they’re more pests or trophies. Nobody can cage a pilot, except his mother. They can take to the heavens when they’re feeling pigeon-holed, and no one to lay wreaths over their casket. This isn’t the case against birds. My larynx too pitch-jellied to make any case successfully at all, this isn’t the case for pilots, either. I’m just saying, if anybody asked, if my choice and words were still ones that mattered to the multitude of strangers who come and go past my window sill, if I could choose to metaphor and meta-morph outside my own lace-up skin, I’d rather…