Airplane . Pre-Dawn

It feels like I exist less in both places—like I am less real compared to everyone else. I bunch little white pillows in the space between my seat and the curved, cold plane wall so I can crane my neck less watching the lapsing, dark ocean. A baby whimpers and the stranger beside me stirs for a moment. The world doesn’t seem to move on without them, despite them. Not me. I am painfully aware that the sun still rises here and the night still rages on there after I am gone, and even while I am leaving. I lean away from the sea as my breath fogs the triple-paned glass. It is humbling to visit your legacy. I am there just long enough to make a wave and gone long enough to have that wave calm into a current, and that current disappear into a ripple. Until finally there is only the water’s smooth steady glimmer reflecting a distant moon.