Heathrow, 2008
Outbound
The terror is not indescribable. It begins in my gut, a crawling sensation that wriggles and struggles to be taken deeply, powerfully seriously.
The airplane taxis onward. The safety pack has been digested. My earplugs are in, my hands are clenched, my teeth are gritted. I know, the wriggling sensation makes it very fucking clear, that no matter how eager the demonstration or how universal the diagram that if this thing of metal and thrust and fire decides to give up the ghost then I am fucked far beyond hope.
There is nothing I can do.
At night – it is night – the lights are dimmed. No reading light for me, or the anonymous passengers around me. In the dark I am alone. Blinking lights outside of the window. A chill. I am cold and I am alone and I am in the dark and I know that suspension means only space below and void and
______________ and thrust. My eyes close and the roar still breaks through the plug, simply dulling the noise.
Vibrations travel through my feet, which is comforting really because it means for a moment we are still on the ground. I am in a bus with pretensions, rolling forwards at a simply comic pace. I am fine again, in my head, in the dark, cold, with my heartbeat in my throat and my breathing tearing my chest and that vile fucking riddle of a knot moving round my gut. I am fine with these until we point at the sky, sixty seconds behind another, sixty seconds before another, because when we point at the sky I know we leave the ground behind.
After the wheels touch air there is one final wrench as the ground fights to hold onto me.
My eyes open in the dark as we climb. My monitor flickers with static and confusion, the grainy image blinking on and off like storm and sky. I almost cry.
There was a dream: Outside of a window was a flash of fire and light, so down we go.
Everything moving so fast, too fast, all in panic. In the dream there are no strangers, and it is my sister beside me. Her screams are the loudest, her fear and sadness and sickness the most palpable. I hold her hand and just say to her the most reassuring phrase I know.
“It’s all gonna be okay.”
Our plane is aflame. I can see trees and terror. I am going to die.
“It’s all gonna be okay.”
New York, 2008
Inbound
Plane. Film. Edited highlights of a sex scene: They are close, they kiss, their clothes start to come loose, they fall out of shot ______________ time slips forward and they lie content side-by-side.
At what point did you learn what comes between the two gaps? When does life stop being handled with 12A kid gloves?
The aircraft bumps and creaks and wriggles and whines and although I am filed with base terror I am still aware that the sensibilities of my fellow passengers are not being offended.
The airline of my dreams is filled with vice and pornography.
(Actually, no, it isn’t: The airline of my dreams is a ferry port or a train line or anything but a bus in the sky that has to battle gravity)
At this juncture I have learned what comes between the peace and the passion. I last held my lover some days and distance away, and I understand that the bits that the film has left out – like kisses that miss their target or the stray, tired hand that flops onto someone’s face in the morning – are as worthy of inclusion as the absent sex scene.
Longing ______________ fucking sucks. And life is in the edit.
© Matthew Sheret, 2008
