after Richard Russell *

i was meant to be born
with wings. soft feathers &
a sharp beak—i was meant to become beautiful
long ago.(†) twenty-nine
seems like a good time
to stop dreaming. i’m going to make it
happen now.(‡) it will be unclear if i thought in advance to fly
or if it just happened, but once i’m gone i will be called
highly aerial.(§) i will be depicted
without feet.(¶)

‍

*in 2018 Richard Russell stole a passenger aircraft from the sea-tac airport, where he worked (1)

† as a ground service agent. Russell flew the plane around mt. rainier and to the olympic range (2)

‡ before heading back to puget sound. an investigation later determined his actions were not connected with any extremist or violent movements, but found no planning (3)

§ or singular motive. many were impressed with Russell’s ability to fly the plane—during his hour-plus long flight (4) he successfully performed

¶a barrel roll. swifts were long depicted without feet: a bird that almost never lands, (5) wikipedia calls them “highly aerial.” air traffic control repeatedly encouraged Russell to land the plane—he never did (6)

1 i first learned of Russell’s flight last night on instagram when a reel came up that played an audio recording of his communications with air traffic control

2 over footage of mountains out of an airplane window. “long live skyking,” read the caption. when i opened the wikipedia page, i wept

3 and played Mirah’s “person person” on spotify. Russell was barely older than me when he died. he, like me, grew up a boy in alaska wanting to join the military. i have long considered

4 flight to be a kind of transition,

5 and birds to be a kind of transfemme

6 imagery. when i read Russell’s story, i thought “that could have been me”