An aeroplane fades in the sky against me, disappearing in the clouds, taking someone away to an unknown land. I sit like a ghost, haunting the night and haunted by self, thinking of a clock that never stops ticking. I alone see it, and imagine. 

I dissolve my tears in the vapours of coffee that separate a reality from another. I sense the change in the sky at two different 2 AMs. The dot of the plane makes it more evident. It goes high and higher – where the air gets thinner and no voices are echoed – into the eternal uniformity of a placid nothingness.

The clock still ticks and its hands travel circles in their enduring but impotent attempts to measure the immensity of time. I, alone, fancy the airport and the aeroplane, half the night, and the whole of me. I look up to hear the coda of a softer sound superimposed on the louder one for the last time in my life. The two rows of eyelashes on each of my eyes are farthest as possible from one another.

The aeroplane is now transparent, and I am opaque.

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