they say you never forget your first plane crash.

i’m being facetious here, a word i learned in childhood which then seemed to mean saying stupid shit on purpose as though you really meant it. it’s like a test for your listener and they can only fail it, most spectacularly if it comes to you announcing that you are just being facetious. anyway no one says that about plane crashes, not that i’ve heard, but in the endless time it is taking for mine to happen, this is the thought that occurs to me. as it does, i can see the words at once in lurid scarlet raised script on a card, the kind that reads ‘beloved daughter’ or ‘dearest wife’ and looks like a welt, or a new raw scar.

[i can hear the steady chiming sound you only ever hear on planes, or at a hospital bedside. it’s a kind of soothing warning meant to convey that yes, things are rather serious but don’t worry, someone’s already thought of this possibility, everything is in hand]

i sometimes like to think about what is at the heart of being a human, i think maybe that’s it: the desire for and capacity to create reassuring sounds like that chiming. whatever else you can say about it, it certainly feels modern.

when they ask me, after (and maybe this is also  at the heart of being a human, that when i think of an after, i immediately locate myself in it) if i was scared i will say