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My Aerodynamics
As I fell from the sky, I smelled fish.
The fish was in my mouth.
My eyes were fish eyes, bulging, bugged out.
I fell like this for years,
in the fishy air. I stopped panicking.
I could think as I fell.
I missed spaghetti.
I was a model, hair blown back
in the wind. I was thirty-five.
I was fifty-three. The sun
winked at me like bar light
through a shot of whisky.
Nights were easier. I actually
fell, harhar, asleep. Five minutes
here, ten minutes there.
Open sky, open darkness.
I drank. I pissed myself.
I stripped my clothes off in the sky.
I was very cold. I hugged myself
and it changed my aerodynamics.
I began spinning out of control.
I vomited clear rain.
I refused water.
Refused breath.
I missed my daughter.
I missed my wife. I missed our home.
I missed smoking. I accepted
I’d never leave this blue prison.
How quickly my mind adjusted,
but I was dangerously bored.
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Edward Salem is the author of Monk Fruit (2025), the winner of the Nightboat Poetry Prize, and Intifadas (2026), the winner of the Kathryn A. Morton Prize in Poetry. His work has appeared in The Paris Review, The Yale Review, Granta, and elsewhere.
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