Tedium

Sestina for practice

It's that time of year where
swimming would be a death wish
and decisions can't be unmade
frozen over like ice glinting like
shattered glass stretched out on
the driveway. The airplane

overhead mimics a laptop playing
threatening, like it'll fly away to where
all the dreams he once had still live on,
the passenger on it making a wish
that the landing will feel like
a blanket warm and homemade.

An announcement was made
within the tight walls of the plane
only getting tighter like
a snake coiling on the path we're
not going to take. A wish
the copilot held on

air, that on her grave and on
God, upon landing, he would be made
a new man—a wish
on a shooting star, plain
and simple, no wear
and tear, reborn like

metamorphosis, like
going back in time on
the twentieth birthday where
he blew out the candles, made
a promise redundant and plain,
submerged his real wish

and wondered which
version of him they'd like
most. He lands the plane
smoothly as usual and puts on
a smile, thinks of the unmade
bed waiting for him. We're

making wishes on
numbers like the promises made
and planes overhead. We're going nowhere.

-

This probably made very little sense, so thank you for reading. I used to really enjoy writing in the sestina form in college and just wanted to have the space to play around with it this week. When I was writing it, I was thinking about all the different paths, career and otherwise, people can choose to take in this life and the feeling of waking up and realizing you’re on the wrong one but maybe it’s too late. Of course it never is.

Needed a nice picture for this, so I’m choosing this scene in Challengers because I watched it (for the fourth or fifth time?) the other day. Something about the music here, Zendaya’s acting, the scenery really just brings back this feeling of being 18 and feeling on top of the world in a bittersweet way.