Airplane Mode for My Heart

I’ve put my heart on airplane mode more times than I admit,

a tiny switch of self-defense that feels like choosing “quit.”

One tap, and all the signals fade to do not call again,

The sky inside goes quiet while the world still thinks we’re friends.

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I learned it from my phone, of course—this modern monk routine,

disconnecting from the towers just to keep my chaos clean.

No texts, no pings, no hungry rings demanding I respond,

Just me, strapped in with turbulence and clouds I never want.

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My chest becomes a cabin where the lights are dimmed to low,

a narrow aisle of old mistakes, nowhere but “up” to go.

Your name, a restless passenger, still buckled in my ribs,

keeps asking for a window seat on love the plane forbids.

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I watch missed calls line up like towns we never will explore,

Each voicemail just a runway that I circle, never floor.

I blame the weather, blame the fog, blame faulty ground control,

When really it’s just me who keeps refusing to be whole.

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Because connection means permission for a crash I can’t foresee,

and hope has never signed a form that guarantees I’ll be

untouched by loss or lightning strikes or engines giving out—

So safer, says the frightened part, to live in flightless doubt.

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Yet every time I kill the bars and shut the signal down,

I also mute the tower that could guide me back to ground.

The friends who send a “thinking of you” into empty sky,

the lover who would stay on hold instead of saying bye.

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One night I saw my screen reflect the loneliness I wore,

a face lit by a glow that couldn’t reach me anymore.

“Airplane mode,” the icon said, that little wing of steel—

And I thought of all the wings I’d clipped so I would never feel.

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So slowly, like a tired gate that’s rusted at the hinge,

I slid my heart from “do not touch” to “maybe we can binge

on awkward calls and clumsy laughs and plans that might go wrong,

on messages at 2 a.m. that try to make me strong.”

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I turned the setting off one day and let the static ring,

I let a text come crashing in like first green light of spring.

No promise that the signal won’t one day just disappear,

but proof that even fragile lines can hold a landing here.

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Now, when the fear says “pull the plug,” I let my fingers shake,

But keep them off the icon; that would make my world a fake.

For flight was never meant to be a permanent escape;

We’re built for messy airports and arrivals; we reshape.

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I’ll use airplane mode for sleep, not for a lifelong shield—

a tool, not a full-time exile from the love I want to yield.

And if the tower ever fails, if all the lines go dark,

At least I’ll know I tried to fly with airplane mode off at heart.