Paper Planes

Airports bring me hope.
I don’t know why.

Maybe it’s Hugh Grant’s voice in Love Actually, floating through my mind like some omniscient narrator, as I walk through the terminal.
Maybe it’s the adventure. The excitement of the world before you.

Maybe it’s the promise of love they unknowingly convey.
The loving arms that await to receive you—
or maybe the arms that release you. The arms that send you off to make your way in the world.

Some of the greatest love I’ve ever received has been in airports.
They are the fixed points on the graph of feeling.

Aunt Nancy sending me to study abroad in Australia for a semester.
Me sending Fernando home to say goodbye to his father, one last time.
M sending me to Vermont, our tearful embrace.
Vermont sending me home, despite that story’s end.
Frances waving goodbye to Hay as she flew to Chicago.

The boundless love that these airplanes transport—

Maybe love is nothing more than paper planes.

Notes flown across the third-grade classroom

— from one desk to another —

cascading to the carpeted floor with a crumpled crash.

Notes bearing nothing more than the weighted juvenile longing for connection.

Will you be mine?

Check yes. Check no.

The mechanical transporters of the human heart. The carriers of love stories to the world.

A world comprised of millions of hearts. Hearts that are steadily beating, pulsating beneath the streetlights. Streetlights mapped out far underneath the feet of the weary traveler. The lights that connect us all.

A scene only observed from an oval window in the night sky far above—

A bird’s eye view. Or maybe God’s eyes. Or maybe just a plane’s eyes.

Maybe love really does have wings.