True, I would’ve loved to begin this poem elsewhere, say, beside the ducks in an abandoned public park, or in the piazza of a medieval Italian town, surrounded by ten unsaddled horses & teen- agers making out in the stables. The tedious truth: I am killing time on a plane, hard at work falling in love with every last passenger— their bags, their comfortable shoes & practical sweaters. My love, today I am smitten with the courtesy of plastic window shades & our collective, orderly deplaning for a woman who must connect to a flight that leaves for Denver in five minutes, & who, in the end, does make it. Having departed in lust, I find I have arrived at simple limerence. The problem with setting out to be sexy is how often our bodies come down to blood, unwanted hairs, & I wanted to say thanks for loving me, but we are not lovers, I would never use a word like lover or love in this poem without setting it beside barbed wire, open casket, hornet nest. Setting it on fire & scooping up the ashes, pouring them into a tiny, neon, heart-shaped locket. Which is to say, avoidance is a kind of coping mechanism, even if it’s not effective. A kind of wishing things had turned toward revelation, a kind of flight, gliding, & the eventual crash—