Why are you on an airplane? - Dallin Hunt

Do you want to be that slowly moving star, blinking green and red?

Do you want the mushroom chicken meal?

Do you savor the pop of tiny cans, work the pressure from your ears through cow-like chewing?

Does part of you believe you’ll be sucked down the toilet as it screams its flush?

Do you pine for the flight attendants, their crisp vests and intoxicating hairspray, hoping they’ll jostle your shoulder as you pretend to sleep, and whisper in your ear?

Are you in that spoonful of carrot paste, flying toward a baby’s face?

The coin-operated metal ride, blistering hot in the kids’ play place?

Are you afraid to be suspended over raging seas, kept safe only by a thin capsule, tossed on the wind and lashed by lightning?

Do you imagine the way you cut a white gash through a pink-orange sky?

Are you away on business? Are you “away on business”?

Do you want to have sex in a bathroom too small for the bending of your eight limbs?

Do you want to fire at the enemy? Drop a hydrogen bomb?

Which pinnacle are you hoping to reach—freedom, terror, sex, war?

Or love?

Did you take off before they could stop you at the gate?

Was it an escape?

A mistake?

Are you finally coming or finally going?

Are you catching a breath in the instant you soar above it all, unsure how you’ll survive the plunge and everything below?

Are you airsick, cramping, hyperventilating?

Are they snoring, coughing, crying?

Aisle or window?

Newlywed or widow?

Dishonorable discharge, surgery, sabbatical, pilgrimage, philanthropy, or stolen artifacts?

Is your parachute intact?

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Hi, I’m Dallin Hunt (he/him), and I have an MFA in creative writing and am working on my third novel. My work has been published in SORTES Magazine, The Colored Lens, New Delta Review, and elsewhere, and I was named a finalist in the 2023 Owl Canyon Press Hackathon. I'm from a very small town in Idaho, and I love mountains, snow, Mario games, hockey, and libraries. Instagram: dallin.hunt.author