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Flyover Country

​

I’d grown tired of rumination and all-things me,

​

so I laid supine in the park, receding into earth.

​

Just as sensitive skin could discern even the footfall of ants,

​

I realized that I still loved her, even though her

​

oxytocin

remained locked-away,

the combination and key,

withheld from me.

​

And as I studied the cumulous clouds like a phrenologist tracing the contours of a skull, I noticed a

 

jetliner arcing past;

​

To those passengers above, surely this was just flyover country.

​

Who was I then, if not felt, seen or heard? I wondered, reciting my incantation:

​

"I want to be my best so as to be better for you."

​

And in-between words, as I attempted to inhale the entire sky,

​

my lungs could only retain

that which the body required.

Writer

Photographer 

First-Time Human

JUSTIN D. OAKLEY

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