Turbulence

It’s impossible to judge distance at 35,000 ft. So you measure it in time. When the plane fell, I didn’t try to estimate how many feet. I counted the seconds. Then, I suppose, if I had been really serious about it, I could have applied the core principle of physics involving mass, acceleration and time to figure out with an almost certain, and even surprising, degree of accuracy how far we fell. But I didn’t. For, in truth, it didn’t matter. Because we fell far enough for me to hold my breath. Far enough for my heart to literally hover, suspended against my sternum. Far enough for me to decide to count the seconds. Far enough for me to make this set of almost casual observations. Only to have my heart start up again hard, pressing blood and stale oxygen fizzily, forcefully up to my skull when the plane hit bottom. But not really. Not really the bottom, I mean. It was just more air, more pressure, more resistance, a harsh density that bounced our whole tremendous mass upward, back to our designated path. And we flew on. Through the clouds. The breadth of which, we could only measure, once again, in time. And heartbeats. Of which there is and are only so much, so many.