Milwaukee at dawn.
They were unprepared for the squalling, sniffles, small screams, the bundled misery. (Parents didn’t know she needed to pop her ears). I reached over, fixed the child, but still didn’t sleep, mind furnished with too many crooked curiosities, matching floral sets of regrets limned in the light of painful neglect. I wrote out a letter before I left, but didn’t receive even the barest politesse, an acknowledgment back. So self ethereal, my gestures made so pointless, so invisible to archaologists, history-less, the plane felt like a casket and myself a misfit, unwanted ghost, passing by the country at heights too rarified to survive. Landing was the last thing I thought about. Landing or getting to the other side.