Genene Carter, paper airplanes

you had blue eyes, they said. eyes the color of the sky. you must have gotten them from your daddy because the rest of us have brown. you were a lot like him, I think but maybe not in the ways he wanted.

he flew fighter planes in the war while you threw paper airplanes into the sky.

you were smart, they said. too smart, maybe. always asking questions no one could answer and wondering about things no one understood. I bet it made you feel trapped.

you never did too well in school. I’m sure they wondered why. I bet you sighed when they expected too much from you and turned toward the window instead.

I bet people told you that your head was always in the clouds like it was a bad thing. but boys who were born to fly usually like it too much to come back down.

I bet you liked the smell of the rain. I bet it tasted like aching freedom to you. and on summer nights I bet you slipped away by yourself sometimes to skip rocks on the water and watch the sunset. I bet it made you feel at peace.

my dad tells stories of when he was six and you were twelve, stories behind scars from climbing trees and barbed wire fences, sliding down banisters at church, and riding your bikes all over town to the same places he tells me to stay away from now. I bet if the two of you got together, it’d still be trouble.

you were complicated. all of us are, I think. always two things at once, like those pictures that change depending on the angle of the light.

do you remember what it felt like to be seventeen? it’s a heavy number to carry, caught somewhere in between wanting to run away and being afraid to leave.

I bet you were wild in high school, always driving too fast and trying things you shouldn’t. and glory days are made for being young but you were a lot less rock and roll and a lot more solo guitar.

so you traded in your two-wheeler for a “real” bike, one that could take you far away from this town and up to the colorado mountains where maybe you’d finally feel free.

the snap of a finger, the blink of an eye.

that’s how fast you were gone when you slammed into that boulder. it was quick, like a gunshot. flying.

I wonder if your life flashed before your eyes, the way they say it’s supposed to right before you die. did you have time to think of anything in those last few seconds? I hope you had no regrets.

the news traveled fast back home. your daddy took it the hardest, but your mama was always fragile, and when they let her feel your ashes, I bet she cried at the way they slipped through her fingers.

people still walk up to my dad at church sometimes and call him by your name. sometimes he corrects them, other times he brushes it off. I’m not sure if it’s for their sake or his. maybe it feels good to wear your name for a little bit as if you’re still here.

and you live forever in photographs, but mostly in the stories they tell about you and words from love letters and old yearbook pages I piece together like newspaper clippings until I feel like I know you.

if you saw what it was like down here these days, I’m sure you’d say that a lot’s changed. I think you belong in 1988, in your glory days, forever twenty-seven. but sometimes I wish you were still here so you could teach me how to fly because I’m not brave enough.

maybe we can start with paper. that’s the way most letters begin. fold the sides together, line up the edges. fold in, the edges meet. fold down, make wings. aim toward the sky.

maybe one day I’ll throw one high enough.