On a RedEye Flight

Never could sleep on planes.  Discomfort on three axes, folded joint-numbingly upright, constant turbine scream and whine, and fitful flashes of light through eyelids pressed hard shut, edit cuts on dozens of video screens, ignored second-rate movies, earbuds hissing in the head bobbing next to me.

Solace as I disappear through the tiny porthole, winds at 480 miles per hour racing silently though my head.  Sheet of wrinkled gold foil, the sodium city streetlights below slowly parallax, interspersed with moving beams of wearied drivers and blue-red flashes of distress.

Awe as the foil is obscured, black dreamclouds dowse the lights and we rise over moonlight-edged towers of nothingness that dwarf the machine...

...and they begin to flash below and in the distance,  yellow, orange, red, illuminated within for blinktimes, so I don't.  Upside down stormfront, slow, silent, ballet rage.  Rising currents shoulder against the tiny aluminum dot, play with physics, and we drop a little, rise and shudder.

I hide my smile at the NPC's, annoyed and aroused from their video-flashing nightlights and action-film lullabys.

My window is the only one open.