WE ARRIVE AT THE AIRPORT ALREADY LATE FOR OUR FLIGHT,
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& you understand how anxious this makes me, how every time we travel together i know no greater fear than my hands being left in their homeland, but when you find a pigeon trapped inside the airport—batting against the windows like clockwork, peach-soft, desperate—you insist we stop anyway to help it find its way out. somehow i love you all the more for this. we rush into our terminal ten minutes before takeoff & the woman at the gate looks at our faces & laughs instead of screaming, ushers us onto the skybridge, & for once i feel we might actually land on time, like i might actually be good at something more than running. we settle into our seats. around us the passengers stare, grumble, but still i take my meds & tell you my favourite ocean is the sky, & you reply if only you could know what it’s like to be next to you, kiss my forehead & take out your hearing aids & rearrange your limbs to fit on the plane wing. meanwhile i try to breathe, try to rewrite myself as girl or as bird but not as reason for everything that’s ever gone wrong. meanwhile i’ve checked three times & both of us still have our passports & you can’t hear the flight attendants telling us to put on our own oxygen masks before helping others so i listen for the both of us. when you fall asleep on my shoulder your skin is a kind of pirouette. & below us the world, & above us the rescued hands, & in between your heart & my heart look like the same heart from this high up. |
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Topaz Winters is the author of three collections of poetry (most recently Portrait of My Body as a Crime I’m Still Committing, a finalist in the Broken River & Gaudy Boy Poetry Book Prizes) & editor-in-chief of the arts organization Half Mystic. Her peer-reviewed research on poetry, identity, & queerness in Singapore is published in the Journal of Homosexuality & is taught at the University of Southern California’s doctorate program in educational leadership. She has been published in Sundog Lit, DIALOGIST, & Tinderbox Poetry Journal; profiled by The Straits Times, The Business Times, & Entropy; commended by Singapore’s National Arts Council, Vocal Media, & Button Poetry; & featured at the Boston Poetry Slam, the Singapore Writers Festival, & the Other Tongues Literary Festival.