Cabin Pressure

We travel through the violet night. Rolling past the intermission. Bolting to the 3rd act, with our clothing folded, and our lives packed neatly in suitcases. Here comes the safety demonstration. The oxygen masks. The sick bags. Your nearest exit. The belts to buckle low across your body. And the children wail. And the cabin lights dim. And the air conditioning kicks up the dry air and makes it spin. And the jet fuel simmers till it boils over. The take off.
The turbulence. The touch down. The taxi. 

Calm. Clear-skied. Landlocked. Veined with whitewater. On the ground again. There’s no wind here. Thin, black ice on the lake. Snow on the mountains far away. Red roofs above the houses. Bells ringing in the churches. Vapour trails, flying up all alone, or criss-crossing each other. And the nights arrive in sapphire–deep navy and purple–like someone’s crushed a blueberry between their fingers. The days rising in pale, glassy blues. 

If a writer is to the world, what a florist is to roses, and peonies, and bluebells, then so be it. Cut what you see at the stem. Arrange it all like wildflowers.

The rush. The racket. The runaway. Oh! How the smallest details can feel giant. Music playing out of your laptop speakers. Full moon out the window. Painting our nails the same colour in the living room. Liquid soap–fluorescent orange–in the kitchen sink. Peaches from the can–sticky and gleaming–in a bowl. Each day is a lifetime if you look close. A tiny, new-born world. 

We have lived together so long that we laugh and cry at the same things. Sharing music, and groceries, and bottles of shampoo. Adopting each others colloquialisms. We’ll stop in the street to point out the same things (a sunset, a building, a poster, a stretch limo airbrushed a shade of beige I can only describe as putrid, a… well, you get the picture). Moving at the same pace. Talking in shorthand, in glances, in gestures. Sitting across from each other in restaurants and around dining tables for over 100 nights.

Breathing in the same cabin pressure. Trying on these cities like dresses. Finding the seams. Taking them in. Hemming them up. Tugging at the sleeves. Turning around and around and around. I know. I know. I’ve heard the talk, the car-crashes, and the electrical storms. I’ve seen the headlines, the hangovers and the honeymoons. Trouble could be looming like a tidal wave, but so could anything? Who knows what’s going to happen? The world waits for us. We’ll set out towards it together.

Originally published on World’s Greatest Internship here.