Anchorage

Split by Alan.

There’s a feather that splits me in two today. Slow is its descent to the ground. It conducts both sides of an orchestra with equal ease. See how it effortlessly strides from side to side then up and down. There is its music.

We have two eyes that see the same thing. We have two ears that hear the same songs. We have two hands that touch the same skin. Every day, the same skin. The same thing.

But we have a heart that is carved in two that feels simultaneously. One half is complete blue, in the sky. It is the sky and the heaven above it and in it that we always wanted to believe in. It has always been there, in the blue.

The other half is utter white, hard to look for too long. People say it’s because of the sun, but I think it’s because of what people have done with its light.

***

Suicide by Johanna

This is how it feels here. There is sky and there is snow and both stretch endlessly out of sight. The haze is the wind in your eyes. The chill of your eyeballs frosting over. You are alone. You are far along the frozen shore. You stop. Silencing the crunch of your boots on the ice. You listen. Nothing. Not like the quiet of cheerful forests you are familiar with-- leaves whirling, birds peeping, squirrels chattering— nothing but the sound of your own straining breath. You inhale. The air scratches down the corridor of your throat and crystalizes in your expanding lungs. This is how it feels here, like one more step and you might be lost forever. You could slip from the shore on an ice floe and float into a better dream.

You take another step.

***

The Blue At by Forrest

Move, flight. Twenty rows ahead. Almost steerage. Piloting, I know. Who's around, just about. Excuse me I think there's been a mistake you see. Seatbelts forever indicated. Can still spell gin. Smoke for all I care. The masks will descend. Blow into. Crouch against. Lift above head. Pull over. Leave me here. I drop best at altitude. Every fell chance in a lap. Clouds in clouds until we happen again.

***

Anchorage by Nicole

The practice of leaving never suited her. Dividing up possessions and inventing room for nostalgia was a waste of time. She was more practical than that. Especially skilled at breakups, she would pack her lover’s things and leave them stacked in a corner of the living room or pushed into the hallway closet. Nothing sloppy, no time for grief, just the simplicity of moving on.

So she didn’t really expect it, to feel like this. After informing him that it was over she didn’t want the packing or the hassle of replacing DVDs and blenders when 50% of her apartment was gone. She picked a destination from a list and told him to send her a text when he was done. She thought she could avoid it.

But this, this time it followed her. It was weighing heavy like his face when she watched him spin his fingers around the key ring, turning again and again until the key was free. When she looked out the window the tip of the wing seemed to follow her. A smooth gray outcrop in her peripheral that made her want to keep looking back. A spot in her vision that would not clear - not even when she blinked and blinked and blinked.

***

Anchorage by Lyle

Such vastness is both comforting and terrifying, never mind the soaring aluminum tube and no wood to knock on. Why can't we just time travel, says the kid across the aisle to his mother who grins sheepishly and flips the page of her magazine (Good Housekeeping or something along those almost sexist lines -- is there bad housekeeping?: of course there is). I think, Time travel? And miss all this nothingness? Don't you bet on it, kid. I fall asleep with the tick of pages being flipped under the hoarse roar of the engines sucking up and expelling air.