The skies are beautiful.

Beautiful through the glasses of a coffee drinker ensconced in a balcony, each sip of the beverage covering and unveiling empyrean art through a curtain of transient fog.

Beautiful through the heaving breaths of an exhausted runner puffing uphill, looking into the hued distance that shall always remain out of reach.

Beautiful through the glass panes of a library that a student's dazed vision pierces, past the empty checkboxes unsuccessfully trying to usurp attention.

And beautiful to me, as I soar up to the heavens. Every building reduced to a tiny block, every parking lot a confused glittering pattern, every forest a misshappen clump of green. Asphalt arteries creeping across them all, keeping alive the gigantic organism I observe from miles above.

The blinking lights a world below me assure me of the life I cannot see, while the ones on the screen in front distract me from that which I can. I see dizzying patterns through fields of white, and fluffy masterpieces set on a moving canvas. I see folds of mountains blending into pages of greenery, wriggles of blue decorating the dynamic tapestry silently woven by the same anonymous artists who count their audience amongst their creations.

I sail above all I've ever known, all I've ever seen, strangely disconnected. Through the tiny window I have for company, the world presents to me art I cannot create, poetry I cannot write, lives I cannot live.

And yet, defiantly, as I stretch myself into the miserly legroom allocated to a basic economy passenger, I gaze desultorily at a view that the greatest emperors in mankind's history couldn't afford.