NIGHT FLIGHT

NIGHT FLIGHT

(A young man, possibly a Spaniard, living in a foreign city, stows away in the hold of a plane bound for his home, not realising that the sub-zero temperature of high altitude flying, outside the pressurised cabin, will kill him. His frozen body is discovered, when the plane lands, dressed only in a pair of jeans and a cotton shirt: suitable attire for the weather he had expected when he got home.)

The night expires in my arms. I am cold. The darkness is cold around me and inside my heart is beating cold blood through my veins. The plane looked warm. The windows glowed with light. A row of golden suns in its side. I wanted my home. Why is it so cold now? I know inside they are drinking hot coffee and thinking of home or holidays and how to spend their time: clinking ice-cubes that shiver in glasses; relaxing in the sun. Soon the sun will warm me again. But I am so cold now. My ears are ringing. The engines, roaring beside my heart, tear the silence out of the night. At least the shivering has stopped. Do my hands warm my balls or my balls warm my hands? At least the shivering has stopped.

If I had known. I could have brought ..... My soul freezes over. Fish swim beneath the ice. The universe is cold and dead

and I am frozen in its womb, unborn, never to be born. In my damp palm lies an icicle that does not melt.

The cold stiffness creeps from my groin, lustlessly reversing motion: In my body sharp sperms of ice deaden the veins. Through the walls I sense a living so close. Near. Crouched here in the belly of the plane, I almost feel them. Am I dead?

Is this a womb or a tomb? Is it birth or is it death? Flying above the world who has stopped flying. I can’t cry. It is too cold. I am too old to worry about death. My life is soft and limp and curled in the womb of my hand. Easing something. Call the midwife. I know they can hear me. No. They are dead. All dead. The pilot lifeless at the wheel. The passengers turned to dry bones. I am alone. The air is scattering my flesh. It shoots through the night sky star-like;

burning blue in the atmosphere. Am cold. GOD. And alone. Take me home. Take me home. The stars whirl around me like spheres of cold dead flesh. One in each hand: The sun in my 9 right hand; the moon in my left hand. The candle of my life flickers. But there is no heat. My mother hates me in her cold womb. Let me be born. Metal forceps clasp my head in a vice. Drag me from this hard steel mother. My father is the sea. I plummet down. He waits to wash the after-birth from me

in his waves. To take me back home to the sun. Carry me along, taddy, like you done through the toy fair! Shoulder high! Let me see the distance. Let me settle here near your head; against your foam-white hair that blows mindlessly on my face. The world is white and lovely now. A seagull fathered me. My Mother, a great seabird, dropped me in the foam as she passed. When the steel shell breaks I am free: A gull egg in one hand, a land egg in th’ other: The broken shell forms the earth and sea.

The sun lifts me on his bright wings towards the sky I fly far from this star this world and the suns that burn and die and

inside my heart is beating cold, around me is cold and cold am I. The darkness, the night expires in my arms.