it’s 12 hours to Tokyo
six more to Bangkok
with a window whose view
inverts the mind
as forgotten faces
leer big-toothed and hungry
through glass
time is sucked down
to the moment
in this womb of a cabin
that smells of bodies
and re-breathed air,
of a placental hammering
against an impersonal sky
thoughts turn opaque
become snail-like
as words fall away and
you listen through your fingers
to engine sounds and coughs
and the drone of hours till
you relearn how to become
mute as leaves in dry rain
