9/8 As I come back above Eastern New York on an almost perfectly southbound course, thirty-six thousand feet up in an evening sky, a realm where the sun has set only minutes ago and the horizon is a deep orange, I tell J that I’m passing over Plattsburgh, Burlington, and Newburgh, where she is, but I wonder whether these realities, when there’s nothing that could possibly make them intersect, are really that different from thoughts and stories.