Flight

She went to airports to watch people. Businessmen at work, lover’s reuniting, soldiers coming home. It was all fascinating to her. When she stepped into the terminal today, however, it was with a purpose. Her heels click-clacked on the cold linoleum floor as she approached the counter and purchased her ticket. Her heart pounded in her chest as she sat at the gate in the battered leather seats. She still had some time to look around. She saw a mother fussing over her child, wrestling off his little jacket. She saw an elderly couple, grasping hands tightly, speaking softly.

Her flight was called. It was now her moment, her time to be watched and have people wonder; where is she going? Where did she come from? This was her homecoming, a place she had not been in ten long years. She wondered about all those people in the terminal, and how she now melded together with them like a school of fish in a vast ocean. The plane took off, painting new clouds in the midday sky.