I watch the sea through a tiny hole in a flying device, the vast darkness of it so harmless from a distance. the same sea I grew up in and where an old friend now rests forever young. a voice tells me “we are landing in the hours of darkness” and I guess I am arriving where I was supposed to arrive. the darkness I longed for when my last lover died at the beginning of summer. a grief I wanted to process but now it feels distant already.

like I was living in an afterworld 

we dive sideways into a cloud and I feel a burst of lava running up my throat. a beautiful volcano, the joy and sadness of an incomplete reunion. a sister sleeping at the other side of the island while another one is digging graves in the cold.