The Cockpit

Just like the height of any well crafted story, we ascended into the sky with a great climax: little sparks tremulous, furious, darting little souls growing into big bangs, pops, and fizzling tablets that you consume in attempt to stifle a heartache whose enormity grows in relation to useless desire. The others, standing at the water's crest, drunkenly ooohed and ahhhhed at our incredible lightshow. Excitedly, they barbecued below us and unaware of their sacrificial tendencies for interesting conversation, they anticipated a spectacular finale. So we crashed that airplane into a wooded lot of Elm, Birch, and Linden trees- (if it were a dream it would have been Danny's field with the tree house and the deer who dawdled by the breadcrumbs). But, hey, that's just me.

Instead, the jarring impact of gravity as she clutched us to her breast rattled us to an alarming reality. Among the overgrown foliage pouring into our cockpit and shards of metal that suggested a painful exit, I pulled myself out of the burning debris while those-too-late firecrackers spit and whirred. And in order for me to walk away from the wreckage, I needed to believe that that airplane would never fly again.