Tal Vez

Perhaps it was just the way the storm had glanced off and away from the city, so that the clouds splintered and separated like venetian blinds...slits that allowed the west to shine in like sheaths that lit up in layers across the sky...

Perhaps it was just the way the graying atmosphere as the plane climbed captured the pinks of the day, moving away from the sun and filling the windows with soft hues...reminding of cake, or candies...feminine colors against a softening lack of color, a gray.  It reminded me of the way you had always made me better, more beautiful, by merely being near me.

Perhaps it was the slight darkening as the plane moved further east, towards a coast already in darkness but at 35,000 feet it was still in the gloaming.  Between times.  Between an afternoon and an evening.  Right before darkness, but not quite the colors of dusk.  Like a void, or a moment that misremembers.  What time is it exactly?  And caught up in clouds, with no reference to ground or sky, it may have been a glimpse of death...nah, that's too melodramatic...maybe just a glimpse of absence...a lack of a frame of reference?  Yeah, maybe that's it.

Penumbra.

Perhaps it was the the brief and brightening storm in the north, the clouds blinking with silvery white sticks reaching down to briefly kiss the earth, illuminating the backdrop in a photobooth flash.  No permanent photos, mind you.  Rather images etched like prison-walls, the point of a rock into unyielding cement, carved bluntly, edgy, permanent...a furrowed brow, a lick across a lip, an inhalation that flares the nostrils in desire...with my head against a plane window... that's the remembrance.

Perhaps it was the blackening sky and the streaks of tiny dots smearing across the glass, the realization of rain, darkening the night in an already dreadful mood.  The clouds now just shapeless lumps merging with the horizon and engulfing the flight as we descended...

Perhaps the day just needed to be plunged into darkness, plunging through dark early fall ice and into a river of dead leaves and cold river waters...perhaps to be reminded of something bright, something much warmer, something that felt like a hand slipped into mine.

Perhaps not though.

Perhaps never.

Fuck, perhaps tomorrow.