Seatbelt sign on. Shakes left. Jolts right. Like Juno’s waves, wind forces the craft down. Decreasing altitude. Wings bank forty-five degrees. City lights stare. Horizontal rain. Heartbeats rise with gusts: 100bpm, 100 mph. Engines pant like prey. Computers glitch. Children cry. Stewards panic. Protocol ditched. Aborted landing one. Hand covers eyes. Passengers scream. Thrusted back into the storm. An underworld over the world. Tensed arms are flung to the side. Shaking legs sweat. Wingtip lights in thick clouds. Aborted landing two. Visions of Grandma Sheila Aeneas has never seen. Flashbacks explode before eyes: primary school, childhood home, loving parents. Tears. Aeolus, Keeper of the Winds, has summoned Storm Eunice. The sign of the cross for all to see. Our Father. Hail Mary. Amen. Amen. Amen. All I want to do is tell Venus I love her. I don’t want to die.
Harry Lowery is a writer and musician from Gateshead, England. He recently gained a Masters in Creative Writing from Lancaster University and was awarded the 2021/2022 Portfolio Prize for his dissertation. His first collection of poetry, An Enquiry into the Delight of Existence and the Sublime, was published with Austin Macauley Publishers, and he has been shortlisted for the Terry Kelly Poetry Prize. In addition to independently publishing two collections of poetry, Being and Becoming (2021) and 9:45 Drama: Selected Poems (2022), his work has also been featured in Poetry Salzburg, The Ofi Press, Publishers Weekly, Train River Publishing, Errant, Sylvia Magazine, Lancaster Flash Literary Journal, Inky Lab Press, NARC Magazine, JN Blog and Patchwork.
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