(from a note on my phone, penned during my Easter break flight that I've been procrastinating to jot down on here)
The runway always appears just in the nick of time. The closer we get to land, the faster we fly. One minute, Washington is still geometric patterns of light. The next, I can see moving headlights of cars. I can read the lettering of corporations on the sides of skyscrapers. I can count the dotted lines on the highway lanes. I watch the streetlights of a bridge reflected in the rippling water below it. It seems certain that we will crash-land among the crawling cars, tear up the overpasses and neighborhoods and overturn the office buildings. But at the last possible moment, the illuminated runways of Reagan National rush forward to catch us, and we are intercepted, like a queen whose attendants take her cloak as her feet carry her through the door.
