All the planes have been used on someone else. All the overhead bins are full. All the seats have been taken. All the coy mistresses, the fleas, the arms and legs in an eternal circle, the modern declarations, the Uncle Ginzys. All their lovemaking, wooing, the come-ons and the passion used up in a Brooklyn walk-up, a dorm room, a humid Ohio or Houston afternoon with some other match who proved less than perfect and enduring even if the poem worked. Lost to us this time—repetition, familiarity, you can’t get on this ride with a ticket stamped by someone else. This flight is headed for Chicago. Or headed home. What’s left to us, now that all the skills and contrivances, successful conquests, past loves, beautiful lovers, frequent flier miles, free drink tickets, and gratifications are laid aside with their dusty laurel wreaths and plastic medallions proclaiming first place in something or other? Now, you pull it out of your suitcase, surprised it ever existed. What’s left in this most morbid of years? What’s left at 37,000 feet over Iowa or Nebraska? I’ll tell you—since Frank and Allen, Edna and John are huddled at Midway, delayed. It’s all words to cover up the caesura, the silent distance between two jetways.