People Like Us

There is a certain space which opens up in the middle of the day in the middle of my chest in the middle of my heart that swallows me whole. It doesn’t happen every day, but nearly every day. Around four in the afternoon, something inside me drops deep within and the outside world becomes less a burden than a blurred background noise as my mind grows soft like thin gray rain, the kind of beautiful darkening mist that cools and stimulates just enough to make you feel like a flower as she opens for the gentle spray. There is a small airport I escape to where I can lay in the fields of grass and weeds and watch the small planes and jets landing and taking off. One after another they glide on the same flight path in almost any kind of weather. I hate flying but I’m trying to get better about it. On this particular afternoon, I’m watching the planes with him as we pass the bottle back and forth between us and the wide expanse of the sky is burning into fiery pinks and reds as the evening ripens all around us. Looking up at the electrified atmospheric dome, I feel myself beginning to fall into a kind of fear that I recognize and dread. I tell him that even though I know I’ve got it better than most, there are times when I want to run. Times when I want to slip away and start over as someone else. He turns to look at me, his face neutral except for the glassy shimmer in his eyes caused either by excitement or alcohol or probably both, and tells me I should go for it. He smirks, the side of his sly mouth curled in mocking amusement. He knows I won’t run I’ll only dream of it. People like us aren’t made for greatness, only plagued with wild imaginations and words in the blood that require constant tending to. As exhausting as it is necessary, we create things in order to have something we can touch that doesn’t leave us cold. To us the world is a mess we try our best to navigate without dissolving into nervous break downs on the daily. Just for now, we hold hands in the grass, our bodies limp and our minds hazy. I take a sip as another plane comes in, red and white lights glowing fierce and steady straight down the runway as the wheels come down. I envy whoever’s inside. Not because they are obviously rich enough to own a private jet, likely lavish with leather seats and a glossy wooden minibar. But because, for this moment at least, it looks like they know exactly where they’re headed.