Bend Fly Run

Sydney: January 2018

Hello.

I'm sorry, is that the wrong way to start this? Writing your full name felt too formal- I know you always hated it. And anything colloquial struck me as a sign of disrespect- to who I'm not certain but surely to someone. I suppose even writing this at all crosses ten boundaries of decorum. But I'm sitting on this flight, the lights turned low and the hum of the engine competing with the snores beside me, and despite the week that I've had, despite the waves and the sunshine and the breathtaking views, the breathtaking moments, I can't help but think of you.

Your letters, I mean. I can't help but think of your letters.

Because it was a good idea, you know? A sweet sentiment. When you told me about the tradition- writing a letter on flights home to commemorate the trip- my heart swelled at the beauty of it all. What a wonderful way to keep the day, to celebrate experience and connection. What a powerful, kind way to remember.

I'm flying back from Sydney now. Fourteen hours stretch ahead and I want to remember. I want to use the time crammed into this polyester seat with intention, not impatience. I don't want to waste this gift on rest when I could write it all down instead, transcribe into permanence every small adventure that beget the larger one, the one that shimmers. I want to tell you what happened when I veered from my everyday life for a week- when I chose a road I'd never taken before.

Those are the roads best traveled, you told me. Made all the better when shared.

So even though you didn't share yours with me. Even though you stole that line from a poem. Even though I knew every time you took a business trip or a holiday you were putting pen to paper for someone that didn't bear my face, copying down an address that wasn't written above my door- I'm still declaring this one for you- the man who gave me the idea. The man who loved me then left. The man I can't stop thinking about, forty thousand feet above the black and blue.

I should give you some background first, before I tell you about the trip- it's been so long since we spoke. Six years is no decade. I know people in graduate programs for longer. It's a span of time many cover with a sentence or two, maybe three if they gave birth to a child.

Don't worry. We don't have a child.

But I'm twenty-seven. And perhaps I'm naïve for thinking I've travelled far in the time since you've known me. Perhaps it's the folly of youth for believing six years in my twenties will be worth more than any string of six later in life. But it does seem important. Monumental and true. I'm not the girl who met you at nineteen. I'm not the woman abandoned by you at twenty-one. I've grown since then. I've learned new lessons and tricks, some harshly taught. I've been with others beyond you- it seems important to say that, to get it out of the way. And while some may claim I still carry a spark- a rush of light that seems destined to flicker then burn- I'm not sure it's the same light that drew you to me, all those summers ago. I'm not sure you'd recognize it today. I carry it differently. I had no choice but to teach myself how.

And that's okay Jamie. I'm not naive enough to send this- whatever jumble of words these next hours become. But if you do somehow read this one day, if fate and fortune carve more jagged turns than the ones they chose six summers before, I hope you understand that.

I'm okay. What happened is done. I've found ways to cope. I've found ways to live. If you'd only seen me, there, standing on the pier, those famous white arches at my back and the ocean stretched in front, you would've had proof of my existence. Of the blood pooling at my cheeks and the heart dancing beneath my chest. I was alive, Jamie. I was happy.

In the time since we've parted, I almost forgot how it felt.

Delilah was standing beside me. We work together as engineers at a conglomerate you'd surely hate. You always despised your own job so much- despite the silver watches and the shoes and the way you wore a baseball cap as if it were a fun adventure. Your job gave you those things. And while my title would sound as boring as yours- the work is logical, bound by rule. I crave it.