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Plain of Flight
Perfect white - clouds rolling like hills under
A sky pale blue like his eyes: sightless, remembering.
Staring through a glass oval, indented deep
Into plastic and steel, hollowed out like bird bones.
Hair falling in a curtain about her sleepy eyes, she
Leans her head just to feel the pressure on her temple.
One twisting mass rises like a marble temple,
Piercing sky as if jagged ice had floated just under
His cheekbones. Drowsy, he would hum, and she,
Blinded by reflecting sun, squints remembering
His piano smile, ivory keys aligned as buried bones,
Dormant far below her feet, in earth just as deep.
He is the fulcrum of her mind and it is spinning deep
Into echoes of thoughts resonant through temple
Halls snaking inwards till her rattling bones
Dance as a slack-limbed puppet, flesh burning under
A hand too cold for memory, remembering
The sunlight dappled with the shifting leaves. She
Wonders how steady is the wingtip, she
Muses on the coolness of the ice crystals deep
Within the center of the whiteness, and remembering
The stars caught in his lashes in the rain, knows a temple
To his tribute should be patched from cloud and sky under
The unyielding warmth of a heartbeat caged by bones.
Shoving off the grasping fingers of the wind, her bones
Screaming unheard, eyes stinging, watering, she
Leaps into air as trusting as if waiting arms under
Her body will lift her like a crucified angel into deep
Heaven where he stands, ashen lone temple,
And stares bemused, melancholy, delighted, remembering.
Her eyes have opened and remembering
Where she is, exhales heavy and long, bones
Sagging into stiffness, entombing like a temple,
Feeling emptiness seep into her drowsy eyes, she
Sees the clouds receding from the sky and deep,
Engraved in vacant sand, an ink-black river coiling under.
Again remembering, she exhales, knowing this is she,
Not the bones veiled by memories deep;
Her temple pulsing, knowing what death buries under.
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I've personally never gone through the loss of a loved one, never mind a loss as heart wrenching and world shattering as that of my poem's speaker. Yet, the funny thing is, I felt a strange compulsion to write this feeling. The image of a girl jumping off the plan's wingtip and into the clouds is one that came to me while on a long flight back to California. The image stayed with me for a long time and (I'm not sure how) but this poem came out of it.