Tue, 25 August

COOK STRAIT, 23:14 The lanyard on the tray table coils like a question no one asked. Above it: a pen at an angle that is not quite rest and not quite fall. The window holds what Wellington no longer needs of itself. Somewhere in the aisle, a woman has been mid-sentence for forty minutes. Her hand has been open like that for forty minutes. The water in the cup does not move at all. The lights of the instruments have been dragged sideways into threads. This is what flight is, finally: a room going through darkness too slowly to feel it.