izzy

1. I want to look up videos of baby pandas and show them to the whole cabin, because they seem tense. ‘LOOK AT THIS BABY PANDA, AND TELL ME IT’S NOT THE CUTEST THING YOU’VE EVER SEEN’. You can only get internet in the air on fancy airlines. Ryanair is not a fancy airline. It is the exact opposite of a fancy airline.
2. Flying over the alps in a crowded Ryanair plane is probably one of the greatest things you can do. If there are gods, surely this is where they live. Or some of them, at least.
3. The little girls across the aisle are wearing matching rainbow zig zag dresses, and white leggings and white socks with frills around the ankles, and even their white sequinned shoes match. Their headphones are different colours, but the same brand.
4. When we pass over the alps I’m listening to my favourite mixtape and this really dancy electro tune kicks in just at the moment I’m going ‘wow’, not really believing I’m actually looking at the Alps from the air and wondering if that’s even the Alps because I’m terrible at geography. No one else really seems to notice, me craning my head looking around crazily around the cabin to check if anyone else is going ‘wow’ or just kind of glued to the windows with awe, synth and percussion pumping through my head. We’re floating over this stupendous bunch of mountains in clouds that look like super slow-motion photos of exploding icing sugar. They look simultaneously edible and terrifying.
5. The littlest girl in a zig zag dress and white sequins across the aisle decides to try and start changing her own nappy. She just stands up on the seat – she’s got a row to herself for some reason – takes her leggings off, and starts undoing the nappy, telling her Mum in the row in front it’s wet, her Mum replying ‘mm, ok, well -‘ without acting on it yet or even really looking. I thought nappies were too complicated for toddlers to operate, but now that I think about it, that seems ridiculous. It does seem strange though, that you can be capable enough to dress, undress and change your own nappy but you still go ahead and pee in your pants.
6. I somehow find a photo of my ex boyfriend with my dead budgie on my laptop while waiting for the connecting flight in Dublin. I think about how in a way everything that photo captured is now dead and I think about impermanence and I have to remind myself that even though he’s posing, pouting a fat kiss to the blue ball of fluff, that was the only time. I don’t think he liked my budgie. I guess not many people did. He kind of hated everyone back, except me. I loved him. We had an understanding. Still, he was mad when I moved out and left him to languish in a corner at my Mum’s house. I still feel bad that I didn’t bury that tiny feathered body that loved me for 10 years myself. That my sister had to be the one to make sure the dogs wouldn’t dig him up.
7. The sunset’s roaring, and I think it looks like someone’s simba’d a smear of blood all over the horizon’s forehead. I can’t decide if we’re flying under the sunset or in it.
8. In a hotel room in Sicily with all these tiny bottles of shampoo and mini soaps and shoe polish and disposable slippers thinking ‘thank god they provided a toothbrush too’ and ‘this is a big-ass empty bed’. The crusted blue on the shower is so vibrant, I know I must really be in the Mediterranean. The water probably has more minerals, is more virile, knows what it wants, running over my distended belly swollen with the cheesy pizza that I should have known better than to eat.

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sarah

High above the world where the thunder brews
She looks down and sees the circling tigers sneering in the dark
And the soft pink-nosed rabbits huddled in the street lights
Slicking back their ears rubbing ash into their fur
Blinking away tears as the battle lights fill their eyes
Shuddering as the growling rumbles sickly in the night
She wraps the clouds around her and wills sleep to come
Spits out lightning to drown out the horrors in her head

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