Lifetime United Pass

Lyrics

Nineteen ninety.
A small black card.
Two hundred and ninety thousand dollars.
Not for a plot of land.
Not for a door with a key.
For the air.

The pen must have made a sound on the check paper.
A crisp tear.
The finality of a number with so many zeroes.
He bought the horizon.
He purchased the perpetual 'next'.
The cabin lights dimming for the first of twelve thousand times.
The soft click of the seatbelt.
The promise wasn't a destination.
It was the leaving.

The plane will go with or without me.
So why not be on it?
What is a home, Tom, when your address is a flight number?
What is a neighbor, when it's the stranger in 2B?
You paid once.
And now the sky pays you back.
In miles. In years.
In never having to land.

Your wife hates to fly, she stays on the ground.
Watches the garden grow.
You fly to Los Angeles to pick up a Cadillac.
You fly to Australia for a single dinner.
Three hundred and seventy-three times in one year, the wheels left the earth.
You became a ghost in your own life.
A constant, first-class presence in the logbooks of United Airlines.

The plane will go with or without me.
So why not be on it?
What is a home, Tom, when your address is a flight number?
What is a neighbor, when it's the stranger in 2B?
You paid once.
And now the sky pays you back.
In miles. In years.
In never having to land.

Twelve days without touching soil.
Living on recycled air and complimentary champagne.
Did you buy freedom?
Or the most beautiful, temperature-controlled cage ever built?
Did you escape the world,
or just find a way to watch it from a very great height,
forever passing beneath you?
The clouds don't have roots.
Neither do you.

The hum.
Always the hum.
The low roar of the engine is your quiet.
The clink of ice in a glass.
The sealed window, showing nothing but stars or sun.
The little black card in your wallet.
Sleeping.
While you fly.