today, the sun came up seven hours early.

the plane was shaking.  i don’t much like it when planes that i happen to be riding in shake.

quite impersonally, a man hands me a water in an in-flight plastic tumbler.  one ice cube.  that’s the first thing i noticed…  the second thing i noticed was a nearly microscopic speck  floating dangerously close to my one ice cube.

“i’d better get a closer look,” i thought to myself.  “what if it were someone that was accidentally shrunk, like in honey, i shrunk the kids?”

for whatever reason, since i was a little kid, i’ve had the gift of empathy.  i could always put myself in other’s shoes, and very eerily feel close to how they felt.  at times, a great gift.  others, a curse.

i recall watching honey, i shrunk the kids and understanding completely how those shrunken kids felt.  just wanting to be noticed.  needing someone to notice.  before they were squashed by a tennis shoe, or perhaps crushed in the mandibles of a hungry cricket.  or worse yet… sipped into oblivion while floating in some aloof schmuck’s in-flight beverage.

so i leaned in to check the speck.  oh… just some dirt.

suddenly the plane stopped shaking.  

and as i looked out the window, we slid unnoticed through the fading night.  

chasing sunrise.