While in an Airplane

While our plane was circling, waiting for clearance to land in Atlanta, the sun had sunk low enough to cast a shadow of the tailfin onto the wing on my side of the plane.

Upon seeing this shadow I instantly imagined I was that shadow, spread on the frictionless, handleless slope.

I felt vertigo and fear of death. I felt desperate.

After that tingle of panic I enjoyed being the shadow slipping off the wing of a plane at 20,000 feet. I watched it slide off, inevitably, as the plane turned, and yet the tip most shadow hung on, like a flipper, a moment longer, a moment that made the shadow even more me and then I let go, disappearing somewhere between 20,000 and 0.