I can’t forget
it's the selfishness—
defining the spirit
against the humanity of it all.

We are here to move,
inching forward,
counting days like loose change
in a pocket universe.

Passengers,
hitchhikers on a rock,
journeying between unknowns.

There's no meaning
but to go on,
nothing profound
in the seasoning of days,
just the slow crawl
of existence,
a running joke of the crows.

But once in a while,
a plane goes down—
the world gasps,
writes headlines,
then forgets,
because forgetting
is easier than carrying the dead
on our backs.

But I have to remember.

Their sacrifice
is my permission
to take what I want,
to hold you without apology,
to let the heat of my own selfish love
burn me clean.

Maybe fairytale love is real—

I've seen beauty so sharp
it cut the air between us,
felt love so vast
I mistook it for god.
And if it was all for nothing,
then nothing is enough.

When the plane goes down,
I can love you madly again,
no matter what the world has done to us.

I am not just a vessel
carrying god between centuries.
I am the cigarette
dying between your lips,
the exhale of something fleeting,
brief,
but alive.

When the plane goes down,
I'll love you—
without reason,
without redemption,
without end.

-

I can't ever forget this.