You and the progressive rock airplane that is your love 
are making the crazy leap to stratosphere
when something comes knocking on the hatch door.

It is the object of your affection,  wearing a jet pack.
She’s holding the ring you gave her in her hand.
She hurls it into the plane and swoops away.

Your crew secures the hatch behind her.
They turn to look at you,
stoic in the pilot’s seat.

How did she get up so high as to get to you?
Some questions are meant to be unanswered,
or to be incomprehensible

without a life change, or to be aged into
before answering.  It rarely matters which 
of these is true.  What matters is what the pilot does 

with the progressive rock airplane of his love 
after a rejection.  Does the pilot choose
to settle into an awkwardly worded power ballad nose dive,

or surge higher on waves of bass triplets
and Mixolydian modal guitar runs until the plane
reaches its structural limits and explodes?

You push a tear back into its duct 
through sheer strength of will.  As if in 
a coda, you head back to base.