Airplane

There’s an old couple sitting next to me on the airplane,
lookalikes in the way they only can
after 50 years sharing a bed, she cries
for two straight hours of the flight.

Their bodies long ago learned to fill
the groves in each other’s heartbreak
and he holds her like a good habit.

If that is what love looks like
then I have never been in love.









Jasper Wirtshafter is a trans spoken word poet from Athens, Ohio, in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. Currently, he lives in the least terrible town in Indiana. He performed with F Word Performers, a queer feminist art collective, for four years. His work has been published in A Quiet Courage, Us for President and the forthcoming Not My President anthology.