Cabin Pressure

I sit on a plane full of strangers and all I can feel is I hate, I hate,
I hate.
The child behind me screaming (for fear or attention?), the overly talkative woman to my left,
the presumptuous man in front of me who fully reclined his seat into my lap before we even left the ground.
I wonder, for a moment, if I am being unfair. I stop wondering. I know.
I go to the lavatory and stare at my face in the flimsy mirror, trying to will it into beauty,
or happiness, or even a polite smile,
But all I can see is the tightness in my cheeks. the crescents beneath my eyes.
the blandness in my too-big smile. my crooked nose.
I cannot even see the hatred.
There is a black speck in my eye (mascara perhaps?), so I lean in closer,
closer, until my nose brushes the already smudged glass. Suddenly I am falling, spiraling through a watercolor blur
of blue and white. The plane is a black speck in the distance. My lips curl and my heart fills as I think:
no one can blame me for this.

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