21st century angels

I had this friend once, she liked to drive out to the edge of the city at night to watch planes fly in. One night she called late, told me to come outside. I walked out onto the porch barefoot and there she was waiting. She rolled down her window and told me to get in. We drove out through the deserted city towards its ends, down old industrial roads with trash pressed into the gaps in the sidewalk. We idled in the car at the entrance of an old military base and waited. I asked her what she liked about them. To me, the planes are like 21st century angels, she said, her red hair bloody with the night’s withholding shadows. Before my mom died she told me she was gonna come back as a butterfly. She was being eaten alive by cancer, it was close to the end and all she could do was lay there, sinking. I guess flying sounded like the best thing in the world. Well... there aren’t many butterflies any more. So I come here.

We waited for a long time in the dark without speaking. My feet were cold. The radio squeezed out old punk songs, and I had the feeling of remembering a time I never knew—one in which people gathered in rooms to be with each other. Life isn’t meant to be felt alone, I thought, looking out at barbed wire. To our left a white ring of light was emerging on the horizon, a blazing comet finally coming to end it once and for all. It grew larger, until passing overhead with a rumble that could drown out the call of a thousand birds, if there were any. Wasn’t that beautiful? She breathed, exhilarated. I leaned back into my seat, exhausted. Can you take me home?

We sped back towards town along stilted highways. Brick houses, strip malls, anywhere. It was early spring, I remembered. Where were flowers? My bones felt heavy, a sick sac of stones, dense with the weight of earth’s silence...