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Cloud cover like a badly made bed, ruched in sections, rushed.

Whatevered for reasons of a lifetime of do-overs. Why bother

trying to change? The gathered duvet sometimes mimics you,

makes double. Dopples a decoy. An escape plan. The safety

of numbers and cover. When the wing dips, a hole in the sky

revealed. Until then, a man in the aisle seat. Calculations

to see if it’s possible to slide through the fisheye window

if he touches your thigh again, your face. We like our planes

fashioned after ships. The illusion one could jump or be forced

off and possibly survive between the distance and everything

that wants to live how it’s always lived. Without compromise.

When does knowing a person begin? Was it when he said

you look like his ex-wife? Hair naturally red, not like yours.

Fake. He can tell, but it’s OK. What your children together

would look like. That if you had been born in Fayetteville,

he would’ve liked to have known you. Feels he does. Not

like the absent husband his mind weds you to. The one who

abandoned you to his company like a firing squad to its post

waiting for a reason to prove worth. The moment he asked

for vodka on the 53-minute flight from Charlotte to Wilmington

to bridge the gap between pre- and post-flight beers. Or how he lifted

his shirt to show you where his lungs had been punctured and once

collapsed, he said he’d briefly died and now is, briefly, alive.