Flight Number UA50

The customer service agent glances
at my family, asks me, in an expression

dressed for a funeral, if I’m travelling
alone. As if the destination written

on my ticket were a city of drowned
stones, languishing at the bottom

of the ocean. How the simplest
questions can explode your voice

into a wreckage of silence
at the precise moment your luggage

is sucked into an ominous tunnel
like cosmic debris. As babies,

my children burrowed in the scent
of those shirts and shawls on howling,

wakeful nights. What if I can’t
memorize every millisecond

of their faces before boarding?
I try to divine the fate of my flight

in the agent’s palms, thinking
there’s still time to rewind the occasion

of my demise. The mornings I braced
for impact as light crashed through

my window, tossing me out of bed.
The nights air disaster movies or

breaking news stories blazed
on my wife’s bare back, my kisses

plummeting. A woman I once knew
convinced her friend that statistics

were in his favor. I’ve spent two
decades failing to forget the rest.

The agent says have a good trip!
I exhale a prayer, imploring the sky

to flex its muscles for the next
twenty hours. Make a catastrophic

noise, as if saying, to where?