by Emryse Geye
I.
I fall in love every time I fly.
Leaving Dallas:
the medical student
wearing headphones and
a full headscarf just to forget her
be-planed predicament.
Above Tucson:
the sorority sister
with the strawberry hair whose
father is waiting
at the baggage claim; they leave,
arms over shoulders over arms.
In Denver.
The woman in security:
her bright eyes contradict
the softening skin on her hands
like Kleenex,
like my mother’s.
I desperately want
to be travelling away from here
with someone,
with one of these
walkabout-women at my side
on a midnight-plane to anywhere:
companionable silence,
holding hands in anticipation.
II.
My parents call from
twelve-and-a-half
hours in the past
to tell me that
when they dropped me off
for my flight to Seoul
on the way out—
they saw a woman
striding confidently through
the winding Sea-Tac security,
carrying what they were sure was
her whole life on her back, Emryse.
She was going off
somewhere.
On her next adventure.
I like to imagine
her lived-in day-pack,
her tried-and-tested shoes;
her threadbare smile.
I like to think she was happy
because
they told me they knew
that would be me,
one day, and
they told me she had been
alone.
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