The plane began its languid departure down the runway, the whirring of engines abrading his ears. He looked out the window towards the clear path, an empty runaway unencumbered by thunder, rain, or even clouds. “Looks like smooth sailing,” he thought casually to himself. The steady movement was almost hypnotizing in its monotony.

Without thinking he pulled out the photo, the last one that he decided to keep, from the back pocket of his wallet and looked—no, glared—at it. He felt fire in his temple, his brows furrowing. The urge to rip it to shreds was as strong and hot as the tears he refrained from shedding.

I saw you there, like a whirling firefly against a pitch-black sky. You were dancing above the lilies that hung daintily along the pond as we watched the fireworks shooting from a festival far off in the distance. You floated there like you barely belonged to this earth. I thought that’s what I was searching for; I thought you (and I?) were destined for great things.

The routine voice of the pilot thrust him out of his daydream, explicating some inane details about flight times and landing procedures. “In the case of an emergency—” he heard it drone. Rest assured, everything would be fine, the featureless voice insisted plainly.

How I love(d) you, he opined. You devoured me and all my passion, fusing it with your own, overwhelming me until I was but a shadow of your being. I thought I would drown in the radiance that emanated from your flesh. That smile that stretched to the ends of the earth, that laughter that skipped and hopped and pranced away, that I would try futilely to grasp, to possess. I should have known from my endless pursuits that I would never catch you.

The airplane lurched predictably towards the sky, a steady rising motion that was all too familiar, safe, and benign. These machines were built for comfort, assuring all in their belly that they had nothing to fear.

You filled me with tremors and jolts, casting shock waves into my body. You hurled me, time and time again, into your multitude of abysses and countless heavens. All I wanted was to, just once, lay on the twirling grass with you and look up at the motionless night sky and throbbing white stars.

The airplane pierced through the clouds, reaching its designated altitude. The vision ended as he opened his eyes, staring out the window. He sighed, a deep and heavy and resigned sigh, accepting his fate. Hand cupped to his mouth, his eyes roamed the quiet and serene nothingness that surrounded him now. He peered again at the photo. At that smile stretching on and on.

Time ambled on like the movement of the airplane as he placed his index fingers on one corner of this final image and tore it from one end to the other. In his mind, her hair aflame, she screamed from far away, sending echoes through his heart, as she fell eternally into darkness until only the light emanating from her fiery hair was visible, slowly becoming infinitely less so.

Goodbye, my love.

He looked out the window again, at the thin crimson sky, and the white clouds beyond it expanding for thousands of miles, tainted by the sun’s burning hot rays.

He wiped away vicious tears, put his head on the white polyester pillow sitting pertly at his side, and slept.

Brian Connelly is an English Lit major dropout who has returned to writing after a twenty-year hiatus. He was published in several poetry journals and won a local short story contest as a youth and has recently been published in Down in the Dirt Magazine.