i. Love is a strange thing
It threatens the girl who sits alone for the short ride on a trolley bus to the airport, blue and orange lights highlighting her face in between window seams
She sits down in a scratchy blue seat and is afraid to buckle her seatbelt, to lock herself in where the cold dry air pushes in at the corners and gasps in her eyes
The check-in managers don't give a second glance, but her
small black suitcase feels far away
She picks it up, hugging it like a teddy bear

ii. This is a carry-on, she says
and as the woman in her trim shiny blue suit nods, all the girl hears is her own voice again
This is a carry-on

iii. Have a good flight
is swallowed in the buzz that surrounds the solemn drawers of window glass in which she locked her heart
A man gives her a smile as he vaults her bag into an overhead compartment
She lets her thank-you reflect off jars, pooling and swirling in eddies that turn in the same direction, never moving forward
Shrunken down into 24A, window seat that no one cared to share

iv. Passengers free to walk around
She squeezes past others in the row and floats down a lone, closed aisle, reaching the bathroom only to find no mirror

v. On planes we change
The real reason our safety scissors have been left behind
In her mind, she snips off each long lock of black hair and pins back the bangs that tickle her eyelids
Smooths on red lipstick ten shades darker than cherry lipgloss; colors that aren't even on the same family tree
The door slides open
She reaches for the light switch

vi. The light was never on
When she walks out, bikers swear under their breath and
mothers hold their children a little tighter
Left is the rolling byways of planes that release the ground
Having clung onto anchors, she is floating away