airborne ovenbird Despite my name I am not a bird well suited to flight. I am, perhaps, more like a penguin or an emu–I'll take to water or land well before I'll choose the sky. And yet I find myself, once again, strapped into a submarine with wings that travels on atmospheric currents, soaked in the sweat of clouds. On board this craft I am bathed in radio waves that carry my voice from the lower stratosphere back down to earth where I would prefer my feet to be planted. My fear runs laps in my constricted lungs but wonder holds its own: my body is in flight, my words can travel anywhere borne aloft on the backs of sea birds with bodies made of radiation, I can traverse two thousand miles in a mere four hours to a place that holds my past. It's when I get there that my own wings will unfurl, finding freedom in being known, in being held, in being home. 250722 ... ovenbird In a world made of clouds I am served a single cookie. It comes in an orange, crinkly package that says “celebration” on the front. It's a bit confusing. Is the cookie the celebration? Is it meant to mark, with butter and sugar, some event worthy of celebrating? Our plane is cruising along with very little turbulence and I am not currently plunging to my death in a tube made of metal and hope, so that is, perhaps, something to celebrate, though I'm not sure even the “real milk chocolate” coating on this cookie cuts it in terms of achieving a real celebration. And with all the grief of leaving still responsible for an acidic aftertaste in my throat I don't think this cookie will taste very good anyway. I guess I'm not ready to celebrate. I want to let sadness build a dam in my chest. I want the pressure to crack ribs and collapse a lung. Because the sadness is just love turned inside out and I want to feel the rasp of every inverted seam, every thread that ties me to the ones who know my truest name. 250806 what's it to you? who go blather from