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Working: Volume 2, Number 1 - Issue 5 Spring 2023

Far Up

I refuse to close my eyes.
I freeze
I reach out for the remote and
I want to see where I am, if
I am flying above an ocean, ice cold,
Dark and deep, or a mountain filled with unkind
Red hot stones.
 
I don’t believe the pilot,
Or the radar, or
The judgement of the tower.
 
How did
three planes crash in
A single year?
How did the missile shoot down that plane?
How did MA 370 simply disappear as though
A ghost ship was not an impossibility?
Then another darted down like a bullet.
The software was wrong.
 
They did not check.
 
You cannot believe them.
 
My plane bumps up and down like
A galloping horse.
It’s just another air tunnel – like
A breezy wave, but my hands are numb.
 
I am ready to fall helplessly
Straight down from the sky
Like a dead bird.
 
But it doesn’t end that easily.
You crash into the waves, ice cold.
You fall for minutes and
you watch, helplessly.
And you scream.
You are locked up in a cage that simply falls.
And then you’re in an endless sea of
Fear.
Sharks start circling
as you ooze out salty
Blood.
 
They say it’s almost impossible.
A plane is safer than a car or a train,
Or perhaps even walking.
 
But I feel that I am falling
Through a tunnel of impossible
Happenings, as I fly
With a life that defies reason,
That’s sitting there, with a burden that
Makes no sense, with stories that
Should not have happened in
A world that mocks.
 
Life does not go by numbers.
Odd things happen to simple folks.
I don’t believe that plane.
 
I want to walk up to the cockpit,
Demand that the man who’s flying,
Explain his moves, clarify he wouldn’t
Commit suicide with the rest who
Want to live.
 
“Tea?” the lady smiles.
My face is pale.
“Yes,” I open my purse,
Quickly swallow that small blue pill
To sleep,
And to forget.

FARIEL SHAFEE
​has degrees in science, but enjoys writing and art.  She has published in decomP, Blaze Vox and various Black Ink Fiction Anthologies among others.  Her art portfolio can be seen on http://fshafee.wixsite.com/farielsart

Copyright © 2023 Empyrean Literary Magazine, L.L.C.
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