05.28.02 - 2:43

we were up high, seven miles, looking down on the cloud line like a sea of cotton wool. where the clouds broke i could see through to the cities below, highways transformed into dotted lines of light, cities turned into twinkling clusters of stars. i was thinking about speed, motion, vectors, the way you move so fast while seemingly not moving at all. i was thinking about being so high.

by the time they got to texas, they'd run out of colors so the state is painted all in brown and green and gray. sometimes there's water but it's all brown or gray or green too so you can't really tell. while we were grounded in dallas i looked out the window over the rain-shiny concrete and when i blinked i thought the ground had turned liquid and the planes were gliding over it like boats. i told you, it's all gray. when you go west the colors get brighter. someone introduces the color blue. it's a positive addition. the earth turns red, though this isn't exclusive to the west (it's been known to happen back east as well). we start seeing mountains, cracked like ice, traced with spiderwebs of snow.

it's best to speak vaguely, step lightly, listen intently. you don't want to be heard, you don't ever want to be heard but you want to hear the whole world around you. you want to claim all the shadows for yourself and wrap them around you like a cloak. you want to leave them all behind, backlit by the moon, spotlighted by the sun. you want the air to trace their bodies and leave their outlines behind after they're gone. you want to know where they go. you never want them to know you exist. you never want them to know you.

i watched you get off the plane with your black bag slung over your shoulder. i saw you walking through the crowds, slowly, deliberately. you were headed for the avis desk and i saw that, too, and i saw you pick up the keys and the car was blue and shiny and i saw you drive off, i did. i mean, really, i didn't, i didn't see any of it, but it doesn't matter, does it? i may as well have. how different could it possibly have been?

the worst way to die, bleeding to death inside your skin. one day you're here and everything's fine and the next day your organs have all turned to mush and your veins have turned porous and you can't breathe. finally your heart stops beating and you'd be relieved except your brain is just a gooey liquid mess and you wouldn't know how to go about feeling relief, or anything for that matter. they could peel the skin off of you like human fruit and once it's gone there's nothing to hold you, there's nothing to keep you looking real and so you melt into a bloody, soupy biohazard spill. they're going to have to mop you up when someone makes the call and the troops get down here. they're going to mop you up and wring you into big bright orange bags and you'll probably be incinerated before the week is up. you were here yesterday. you might have remembered. this isn't real.

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