Gabrielle Gassin

Right before take off

My own mortality moves in, taking a seat on my chest

regrets fill my mind

What if this is it?

A small strip of material around my waist

Tethering me to a seat

40 thousand feet up this buckle won’t

Save me

Flashes of their lives without me

My eyes are choking my vision as I realise

Both

The validity and the stupidity of this feeling

But

The love lines are strong

One time through the air won’t sever this bond

yet already in my mind

the feel of small bodies

Wanting not to forget

Skin like velvet; one four years old with a demeanour beyond him

The other nearly seven, an angel on earth in the form of a child

What luck, to hold them every single day! Though once this far away

continuous moments are spent trying to channel their presence and

Looking out to the cloudy blue beyond and the wing of this

Giant bird wobbles, my anxiety

My existence alongside it poses a question mark

Survival?

And I trust in the universe

And the men in the cockpit

The engineers of my continuity today,

Please