GERMANWINGS by Christopher P. Mooney

 

I think of
eight minutes.
Eight minutes
from 38,000 feet
to the mountainside.
Eight minutes to fall from the sky.

The businesswoman in the crumpled skirt,
her tray-table stored and her belt securely fastened.
The schoolchildren passing notes,
their luggage placed safely in the overhead lockers.
The flight attendant at the end of a twelve-hour shift,
his seat returned to the upright position.
The noisy baby in the forward cabin.

They had eyes and arms
and jobs, secrets and dreams.
At 430 miles per hour
it took
eight minutes
for them to fall, a second to die.
Strangers, united
by the universal language of fear,
pulverised,
locked together in eternal dust.
Screaming, crying, holding, kissing,
not knowing what to think of first,
having to decide who to look at last.

They had a ticket for an airplane
and all it bought them was
eight minutes
to sit, helpless, and wonder why.
Eight minutes
to mouth a wordless goodbye

as the people who knew them,
their feet on the ground,
paid for parking and coffee
and checked the arrivals board
in vain.

Eight minutes.
430 miles per hour.
Metal.
Mountain.
They’ll never see each other again.

 

⊗

 

CHRISTOPHER P. MOONEY was born and raised in Glasgow, Scotland, and currently lives and writes in a small house near London, England. At various times in his life he has been a supermarket cashier, a shelf stacker, a barman, a cinema usher, a carpet-fitter’s laborer and a foreign-language assistant. He is now a professional teacher of French and English and an amateur writer of eclectic poetry as well as crime, horror and adult fiction. In addition to two poems on this site, his stories have been published by Crooked Holster, Spelk Fiction, Dead Guns Press, Devolution Z, Out of the Gutter, Yellow Mama, Horror-Sleaze-Trash, Romance Magazine and Open Pen.