Waiting,
staring out a tiny porthole,
your only contact with the ground and safety,
you roll lazily past another winged steel beast.
They seem to nod at each other.
You wonder who is looking back at you. Is anyone?
Then, loneliness again-
No other beasts but yours.
Stark lights from airport windows,
Images you though only existed inside CD cases
and paintings of late-night diners.
Here, no one is awake with you,
no woman in a red dress smirking
at your rumpled business suit and briefcase.
Only endless blue and green lights
and a single orange streetlight illuminating nothing,
casting shadows.
The hot, harsh cup of coffee to pass time earlier
growls and paws the ground at sleep,
and so one overhead light stays on in the blackness:
a firefly at thirty thousand feet.