KEEP PLANNING time / space / about #042 Jeffrey Zable Once Upon a Time I was a Pilot

I used to fly from the bedroom to the bathroom and from the bathroom to the kitchen. And, of course, I flew from the kitchen back to the bedroom. Sometimes, if I had someone over I would fly them to the bus stop on the corner, but I never took them all the way home. Then, at some point, I could no longer get any fuel— or you might say that I got too old to fly. I just stayed in the bedroom and had the food sent in through the window. How I did other things is too long a story, but I will say that my days are no longer filled with any real sense of joy, yet sometimes there are moments, like when someone I knew from before comes to visit and will talk to me from outside the window. How much longer I’ll be here I really can’t tell you, nor who’ll replace me when I’m gone...

*** Jeffrey Zable is a teacher, conga drummer/percussionist who plays for dance classes and rumbas around the San Francisco Bay Area, and a writer of poetry, flash-fiction, and non-fiction. He's published five chapbooks and his writing has appeared in hundreds of literary magazines and anthologies, more recently in Uppagus, Misfit, Streetcake, Ivo, Corvus, Dark Winter, The Ravens Perch, Datura, Moss Piglet and many others. His selected poetry, When I'm Dead and Felling Blue, is now available from Amazon or directly from Androgyne Books. 21 April 2026