Quiver

Paper Airplane

the stained coffee mug from her mother is shaking in her right palm as she stares out the window, the curtains swaying back in forth as a fan presses upon them in the overheated one bedroom one bathroom apartment she's confined to.

she stares out the window looking into the city streets watching the cars go by. yellow taxis, red cars, blue cars, tiny to large, dark to light, the cars are passing through the streets all desperate to go somewhere or be somewhere but everyone else in front of them is slowing them down.

an old typewriter sits on a shelf near the entrance. her grandmother was a writer, she remembered. her grandmother had told her how the words had come to life, how they danced in her head, how she saw the words laugh and cry and maybe now she realized that life was no different.

but beyond the city streets are parks was a little boy has a colorful kite and he's running around with it, watching it twirl in the windy sky and his nanny is watching with amusement, taking a video on her phone, prepared to send it to his mother.

there are simple things, everything we're used to seeing out of our apartment room window. the room that's never quite the right temperature, where all of the walls are a little too close for comfort. but she tried stepping out of the apartment, she tried looking at the world and not the gasoline exhaust leaving the back of speeding vehicles.

she saw the kite as a magical creature whispering to the boy because at that age his imagination was so prime, she saw the way the streetlights glowed when the crickets began to chirp. and perhaps the lights were not a creation for the ease of the city's nightlife citizens but perhaps it was a soft candle that told what was beyond human eyes that they could awaken.

maybe the cars speeding by with so many places to go filled with people they need to meet were more than simply that. maybe one of those cars was a secret agent about to have a meeting about whether or not to tell the world they had discovered, in fact, a friendly alien that had landed. or maybe, someone was about to meet their step-sister who would grow to be their best friend.

as she stared intensely with strong intention at the rusted, dusty typewriter suddenly she understood what her grandmother meant. watching the words behind the lines, the secrets behind the sentences that are the perspectives of who we are today.

anyone can make a paper airplane out of a paper town.