Gail Beckstein | + Follow Poet |
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Crashing Paper Airplanes

Circling me like a shark in open water,

I wave my arms so someone sees

And for so long you never bothered

To see the huntress I can be.


You said you’d always try to see eye to eye,

But your irises have turned to black

And in my own I stalked out every single lie

And your facade begins to fade and crack.


The runway lights are lit before you now

To alight your lying eyes with blame

And land your crashing paper airplane safely on the ground

But you choose to go down with the flames.


My body has become a vessel

To carry me back to the shore.

And when my feet touch the sand I begin to wrestle

With how to give you less when you want so much more.


Your body always craved something I couldn’t afford,

Some kind of gold I saved for me

And though I feel I’ve fallen on my own sword

I take that gold and begin to flee.


Far away I run with broken bones across the landscape

The desert sand catches up with me

Looking before me now I pull back the blackened drapes

And you are nowhere to be seen.


Are you hiding in my notebooks

To see again when I am drunk with rain

To kill the blinding blaze and drown out everything you took

And mend the burning merciless pain.


So go ahead and let your dirty wings give you lift

And after that grab onto drag

Because you will continue to crash your paper planes

Until you burn yourself out with your own jetlag.

Copyright © Gail Beckstein | Year Posted 2025

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