I’m laying here propped up on my pillows like a patient in a recovery ward.

I’m slowly making my way thru a tube of cheddar Pringles and watching planes drift upward in the smoggy distance.

They’re taking off from the airport that’s not quite a quarter-mile from where I work mandatory 45-hour weeks.

In Vegas, we have mainly sprawl, and everything is pretty much one- or two-story. So from my bed, this gives me a straight shot vantage point-wise through the palm trees to the where the planes point their noses up. But it’s as if my pillows are wedged inside my ears because I cannot hear a sound.

The planes enter the sky at a seemingly relaxed pace, like a minute hand drifting across a clock face on a Saturday, the flights all aimed in the same general direction like arrows at some slow-motion enemy.

So many people are leaving here this afternoon, I muse. I then imagine how hot those engines must be, working super hard to attain altitude, like beat-red weightlifters hoisting barbells overhead for the highest score at the Olympics.

Anything feels like a struggle lately in this triple-digit heat we’re having.

Meanwhile, I can’t hear the engines roar, like when I’m standing outside on my break at work. It’s like watching a silent movie without a film score. It’s as soundless as the breeze causing the palm trees out my window to undulate as if in a coral reef, or like bird feathers falling freely during seasonal molt.

• creative nonfiction
• flash nonfiction
• writing