Flight

I never want to land

My eyes are closed and we are flying. You lead the way because you are a star. Draped in a dress of ideas, wings of poetry scrape through the sky, tearing a swath. My naivete keeps me afloat and I know this on some level. I wear the armor of a hero because you are convincing, and it makes me feel like more of a person than I’ve ever felt before. Your voice is a bell decreeing things that I wonder if everyone else can hear, because they are amazing things, whatever they may be, and at the same time I hope I am exclusive, the only one. Yours. We fly together and you wrap your arms around my waist but I hold your shoulders because you are sacred and I wouldn’t damage you. We’re a wonderful idea, poetry in motion, the brainchildren of Gods in the Garden of Eden. Hold me, you insist, like I’m lighter than air. But you are the air I breathe, so I need no convincing.

We soar through the clouds of steam brewing from my coffee as she and I sit together. She leafs through a book, face-down, absorbing my lifeblood as though it were nutrients. She picks through every page like a bird- take what she needs, adjust perfectly round glasses over a perfectly round face- and only occasionally makes eye contact with me, to shyly kick my foot and remind me we’re here together. I stop flying and I face her, apologizing. She shrugs and starts talking about the book. It’s a textbook she struggles to be invested in, choking words down like bad medicine. I assure her that she’s going to ace her test because I’ve been led to believe I am a hero and I want to make sure everyone is okay. She smiles, taking a sip of her tea, and thanks me. I try not to lose her to the vision of the steam because I am convinced I love her.

She turns another page and a wind picks up, and we are knocked out of orbit. You hold me tighter, and I know we should let go, but we stay together, ricocheting. We compete to shelter each other from every impact and we’re both left bruised but we still fly. It was nothing, just a scare, so we pretend we’re no worse for wear. You create a cocoon of platitudes and shelter us both. Inside your shield I see nothing but you and the words that have illuminated my path. Love freely, love with everything you have, love always, love unconditionally, love unrealistically. I never go too far but I rest my head into your neck and kiss you because all I know of love is nobility, sacrifice, beauty, passion, and competition, to see who can take the bullet first before we’re flung out of the sky like fireflies who can’t see the break of day.

I see light again as she opens a fold in her pete coat, one I’m convinced ties into the poetry of the day she was born in Nuremberg, Germany, when it was probably snowing- the words she used to introduce herself. I am convinced of many things because I love her. She offers to pay for coffee, and I tell her that I already have. She smiles and thanks me, but points out that I have for the last four days. I shrug, because I don’t see why it’s a big deal. It makes her happy to have coffee and I want to be that force for her. She shakes her head, and I hope against hope it’s because I’m endearing to her and not scary like I think I am. I convince myself that there’s nothing wrong with giving my all in a relationship because I want to fly with her like I flew with you.

The shades are drawn and we stay in the cocoon for weeks, learning each other even further, stealing every last bit of empty space. We consume each other, we become each other, we weave ourselves into the skin we once thought was ours, we become so airtight that we are no longer individual entities and we just become love, love, brilliant beautiful sloppy aimless love with you and me and nothing else. It’s easy to hide from what you don’t know is coming.

The cold air slaps my face when we leave the coffeeshop and she quietly tells me that I don’t have to pay every time. I assure her it’s okay, because she shouldn’t have to feel guilt for me trying to make her happy. She leaves with a “yeah, but…” and doesn’t finish, and now I’m confused. I don’t know how I could have went wrong because I did things nicely and I did them right, and surely nothing is wrong between us when even now as we walk through the jagged sidewalks and overshading trees I feel more in love with her than I ever have. She walks with a focused step, her jacket secures her but makes her thin figure powerful, she talks with measured eloquence, she is so, so controlled to envious extents. Does she love me? She never shows it. I thought if you loved someone you always showed it. I reach for her face and she stops short to let me kiss her, taking her in like an alcoholic sipping the leftovers of a shot glass, and I assure her everything’s okay, because I have to believe.

Our faces break apart and we are falling, falling. The binding is breaking, the world is too powerful. The stitches that tied us together are the ones that bind us to death. We gnaw through it all in desperation to escape and fly again, but the light is dimming. Your dress is losing its color and my armor has turned into rags. We fly, we fly, we flap our arms and we move, but it’s artless, it’s messy, and it separates us, because after we tore through what made us beautiful we had nowhere left to go but down, didn’t we?

I fall face-first into the Earth and realize I’ve tripped over the sidewalk. She doesn’t laugh but I can tell she wants to. I curse loudly, feeling like I could spit a tooth out. I reach for her hand and she helps me up, but does tell me that I should be careful, hiding a smirk. I try not to be too soured but I am hurt that my pain amuses her. She rubs my back gently as we walk, oblivious to the pain inside of me, and I forgive her immediately, because I know she cares. We walk side by side, a couple, she and I, something real and touching this Earth, and I should be satisfied, but I still wish we could fly. I wish she knew what it was like to fly, to have everything vulnerable to the world, for everything to witness us as something majestic, but she of studious textbooks, snowy German streets, natural corset frame, birdlike attentive watch over the world, maybe she doesn’t need to fly. Maybe I’ve never come back down

I dig myself out of the Earth and I look for you. I scour the fields, I search the skies, I keep watch from clifftops with my paper thin armor corroded by tears. I cry myself to sleep in patches of sunflower and wake up with the night owls. I try and find the sacred garments of poetry and love, I try and recreate the cocoon of absolute commitment but I am alone, and I’ve believed that alone I am nothing, and you were my everything. I can’t find you because I don’t know if you existed, if we ever existed, if for all that our love of metaphors and ideals and things that cannot be has tainted my life for its longing ever since, if I could ever recognize you if I saw you again.