Miss Paper Airplane

A Story by librarycat

Where will the wind take Miss Paper Airplane. Is she destined to crash or float endlessly through the turbulence of life.

I’m loyal to something, and I’m not even sure I have the words in the universe to describe how deeply it roots in my soul. The best I can do is picture a paper airplane, catching a breath of wind. She sails for only a second or two before losing her stream and floating back to the ground, only crinkling her nose just a smidge.

No matter how much I think, my mind cannot help but wonder how she would gleam and glide through the bright spring sky and shimmer and glow in the draft of powder snow. Maybe it’s my curiosity itching, but it pains me to leave her sitting far down below all of the air.

She was made from a single sheet of paper, delicately folded into grooves and curves with the intention of drifting with infinite possibilities of where the wind will take her. I’m drawn to her as if she is alive, looking to me like I’m the one who will lift her up, smooth out the dimple on her nose, and guide her wings to a free sky.

I take steps towards her, but hear them calling for me. I turn my back on her and am met with the faces of everyone I’ve ever known. A surplus of every monument of my past in the horizons and flags hung on top, leaving only slivers of light peeking through the sky. Like a lamp shining through a thick blanket with jagged cut holes from a knife. The strain blurs my vision as I'm left stumbling back to my life, wondering if I should've brought her with me.

How could I ever think I would be the one to send her flying? What a selfish being am I to drag her to a suffocating town where the wind would drag her into a tornado of shredded sandbags and the gusting sand erodes her paper thin skin until she is left shredded to scraps left on the street.

“Nothing is impossible” replays in my head, an inside joke with my dad that is forever carved into my belief system. Seven-year-old me playing billiards on the Wii with my dad, lining up a trick shot that I’m certain will land despite the banter from my dad rooting that I’d miss. “Nothing is impossible,” I proudly say as I hit confirm and watch the virtual cue ball miss the shot by just a smidge. Disappointed I sit as I mourn the idea that I was wrong, once again.

“If you keep up that thinking, one day nothing will be impossible. Your courage to take the harder shot is what sets you apart from others.”

And with that, a memory forever engraved. A joke my dad and I now share anytime one of us is scared to take the harder path, that deep down tells us the truth we both desperately wish to believe. It’s possible it is just a joke to him and he doesn’t realize how dearly I hold that memory to heart, but I like to think he gets it too.

I crawl back to her, cherishing her in my hands, holding her delicately. She’s so fragile up against all the elements of my world, and yet she stands up brave against the wind, ready for possibility. One light woosh and she’s off, briskly getting whisked up into the sky, doing a loop before nose diving hard into the pavement. Smushed. Her face is smushed and her nose forever pointing sideways. I’ve ruined her. I try to crease out the edges and bring it back to perfection, but the paper airplane is forever damaged from my actions. As much as I’d hoped that everything I’ve dreamed of would be possible, the principle still stands. If everything is possible, the opposite of what I’ve dreamed will be too.

Maybe what I’m chasing is showing me the imperfection of it all. Nothing can be perfect, because nothing is impossible. Everything that is possible is just a collection of all the imperfections that shape the humanity of nature, and that is its beauty.

Although I sent a paper airplane in the sky to eventually come down, she got to experience the ride of her whole life, decorating the sky for a few seconds of pure glory.

Although that was the story of the paper airplane here, in another world where I left her behind her story would be much different. The curiosity itches. What if I had let her glide in her own world? Left before I saw her crash down so I would forever be left with the memory of her sailing away. It itches more. What if I never turned around? If I followed her to watch her story, would I eventually find her breezing through the calm air and in turn, find myself far away from everything I’ve known. It itches. What if I liked it better that way? Deep down, I hear it. “Nothing is impossible.” I’m suffocating in the past, but the thought of the future of the paper airplane gives me the air to catch a breath.

I made a vow to myself that someday if I stumble across another paper airplane laying on its side, I’ll be the one to throw it, but not the one to guide it. Let the fated adventure of the winds guide Miss Paper Airplane to the wonders of the world, and I will follow in her path, letting something so simple take control and whisk me away to places unknown. Where all of the past is merely a cloudy memory, and the days of clear skies end in nights of glorious constellations.

When anything is possible, I know I will meet Miss Paper Airplane.