FLIGHT HELMET — KATHERINE GEHAN

She thinks about it mostly on airplanes, when the pilot deploys the landing gear and the whirring machinery vibrates her seat. Her final wishes stipulate cremation and one day her charred hip replacement socket and ball will be recycled into rivets or significant metal, wings, a rudder. She could affect directional flow. Through scratched Plexiglass and misty cirrus, the cars below are toys. She traces where the highways intertwine and kiss. Her metal fillings could become road signs and announce 106 miles to Topeka, or Children Playing.

The six year old’s bicycle had hooked the undercarriage of her car and threw off steering. All she heard was the scream of another pop song chorus, baby baby baby, cheery as the last. She had looked at the radio knobs so briefly. Six was too young for cavities, and the boy had been lucky, never broken a leg, no doctor had screwed metal into bone. He left behind no pieces for wing flaps, no parts to help lift her up. 

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Katherine Gehan’s writing has appeared in McSweeny’s Internet Tendency, Literary Mama, The Stockholm Review, Sundog Lit, Split Lip Magazine, People Holding, WhiskeyPaper, (b)OINK and others. She is nonfiction editor at Pithead Chapel. Say hello @StateofKate and find her work at www.kategehan.wordpress.com.