Holding Pattern
Intermittent wet under cloud cover, dry where you are. All day this rain without you—so many planes above the cloud line carrying strangers either closer or farther away from one another while you and I remain grounded. Are we moving anyway towards something finer than what the day might bring or is this an illusion, a stay against everything unforeseen—tiny bottles clinking as the carts make their way down the narrow aisle no matter what class we find ourselves seated in, your voice the captain's voice even if the masks do not inflate and there's no one here to help me put mine on first— my head cradled between your knees.
Copyright © 2014 by Timothy Liu. Used with permission of the author. This poem appeared in Poem-A-Day on February 19, 2014. Browse the Poem-A-Day archive.