The Physics of Flight, by Mikki Aronoff

Primordial Chaos 16, by Hilma af Klint (Sweden) 1906

The Physics of Flight 
                                                                                                          
Without a hitch, you lift and drift from the thrust and drag of your bones, arrive refreshed. There’s a spring to your step. The taste of metal is gone from your mouth, your weeds and mortgage a shimmering whisper, your past a distant side show. But for the twenty-five grams of your soul, you are slimmed down, almost weightless. A breeze tickles the space between what was the soles of your feet and the grass below. You bid goodbye to the dog, soar past the estuary’s green-gilled sorceress, circle the grilled mouth of a cow-skulled god. You float and coast, survey all there is. What Was becomes a fleeting question. There is a quiet to this time. It’s a gentler place to be, what your grandmother, dusty with baby powder and self-rising flour, waiting her turn on the porch, would call a blessing. And you have always expected the best.

Mikki Aronoff
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​The image above is a substitute for the painting that inspired this story. It cannot be shown here, so please click here to see Rise, by Gregory Amenoff (USA) 2006.

Mikki Aronoff’s writing has appeared or is forthcoming in The Ekphrastic Review, Virga, Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine, London Reader, SurVision, Rogue Agent Journal, Popshot Quarterly, South Shore Review, The Fortnightly Review, Gentian Journal, Feral: A Journal of Poetry and Art, and elsewhere. A two-time Pushcart nominee, she is also involved in animal advocacy.