Airport 5

left katie at airline gate. on flight to texas. what comes next with rose, with katie. with chris himself.

Our goodbye was awkward at the security gate. An hour had passed almost without notice, but now my flight was beginning to board and our affairs were being forced aside. The first thing Katie learned when we initially met was that I had enlisted for military service, and growing close would not be easy. The mentality was somewhat clear in the concise, unprepared farewell we exchanged. A final kiss, intended as a promise in itself, and I was off. For her, for Rose, for what was now possible and impossible, I did not turn back as I passed through the gates and moved through security. I knew she was watching, though, and it felt right.

I hoped she felt secure about herself. The decision was in no way simple, but she had made her move, and at the very least she could be sure I wanted what she had to offer. What would come much later between us would seem difficult to justify, given the way I wanted Katie after that morning. Just 15 minutes after parting ways with her, I was seated on the plane as it moved in position for takeoff. The flight was nearly six hours, and normally I made every effort to sleep during flights, but there was no way I was going to calm my nerves enough to fall asleep. I took out my ledger, opened the front cover and stared at the jumbled bunch of letters and notes. I took the collection in my hands and straightened them, refolding or flattening them as needed. Before Katie arrived at the airport, they had been in the order in which they were received. I set about reorganizing them.

Katie may not have appreciated the idea of exchanging hand-written letters, but still, she made a genuine effort when writing to me. Long before I met Katie, I came to understand the sincerity involved with writing to another person, and therefore when writing I always took great care in forming my letters to others. Rose was my counterpart in this, and after receiving so many letters from her, I suppose the differences between different women's writing had become quite obvious. Email, of course, had become a very useful tool for writing, especially for those in the military. Tours overseas, long-range training, even combat zones now offered the possibility of connecting instantly with those who otherwise might have taken weeks to reach or hear responses from. Though I was grateful for the internet access the military strained itself to offer, I would continue to write by hand as often as possible, I reasoned, though I was still unsure of how capable postal service might be once deployed.

The letters which lay before me were proof something had happened in my young life, that things were bound or determined to happen. This structure of faith was based solely on the first letters I had received from Rose, well worn from being unfolded and folded again and several years of close keeping. Most of the glitter from these original dusted notes had been brushed away, but the perfume she had also applied, even years before, was still definitive. Looping cursive sentences detailed our time together, thoughts both shared and those kept secret until the proper time had come. Dates and poetry, quotations and musical lyrics, it was by these letters that I had rounded my thoughts in life, and it was of my opinion that she had as well, perhaps with the influence of my own writing for her. It was difficult to appreciate the last letter Rose had sent me, to know that the conversation we had been sharing for five years was seemingly coming to an end. I had written to Rose two weeks ago, but had not yet received a response, though her last letter was nearly a year old. The few letters I had received from Katie over the past six months were therefore quite welcoming, and given the morning's events, were looking to be the start of something promising.

I replaced the ledger in my assault pack, now neat and compacted. I retrieved my ipod and ear buds from a separate outer pocket, and turned my music to shuffle. Placing the buds in my ear, I stared at the seat in front of me and found myself thinking of Rose...as Coldplay began playing softly in my head.