Planes

In my first weeks

of university,

I watched the planes ascend

losing themselves within the sky’s embrace,

growing smaller

as the distance grew,

freedom! freedom!

they had reached what I desired.

On the ground, the rain fell heavy,

it fell like blood upon the cracking pavements.

I took quick pictures,

trying to freeze the moments,

and now look back on them years later,

bleeding myself, nudging towards death’s grip.

Long walks through empty spaces,

cold buildings, distant faces,

it felt like a promise, that the earth

was moving away.

Splitting open every night,

I birthed a new self

who wore a dirty rictus grin around

the crammed corridors and bustling streets,

hood high and hunting for invisibility,

desperate to blend in, not to be found out

to be in those planes,

free at last, and far away,

not stapled stuck in this sickly mind,

these worn clothes, this testing ground

which widened with each step

until I fell between its cracks,

time only recognised

when engraved within concrete,

swirling a mouthwash of freedom,

the taste intolerably sour

and soon-after discarded,

a persistent pain prioritised

the reasons still unclear.