Atoms
Her words are mentally spoken in the distance, doggedly. The trailing thoughts of a wandering mind.
How tangibly bizarre.
Peripherally, out of the window, her eyes catch a whizzing speck that was hopefully not some poor flighted animal being sucked into the plane engine.
The way my life has changed within the past few weeks. How quickly this world turns. And now, I am here, on this plane.
One foot before the other.
The atomic structure of her life has experienced a disturbance of greatgravitas, and the sudden abstract molecular shift has created a thick, hot atmosphere — also comprised of abstraction — that threatens to electrify. Perhaps, she muses, she already has made a fast move and been shocked, and the sting has yet to register.
The potential triggers were many, but which was the immediate cause of her current mental discomfit, no one…certainly not herself quite yet…is to say. The flea in the back of her mind is, as it has been for some time, the kiss. Logic and ethic had, at that moment, collided and exploded.
The Kiss…
Realizing she has been nibbling away at her fingernails, she reclines the seat back and folds her arms. Finger nibbling is translated into the unconscious tap of her toe against a metal bar under the front-facing seat.
Willing herself to nap, she half blinks. Disembarking into deeper wonders.
A year ago, everything was so different. She thought in linear terms of logic and practicality. Now, in a twist of events, her heart has commandeered control of her mind, and ensconced her on a flight towards an uncertaindestination. What to make of it all. Her studies. Her relationships past…and relationships present.
Cosima, again. That research project. That number come to sudden, startling reality. That bright smile of a new friend who wanted…who wants…to be something more.
It is a smile that is frozen in her memory. And the bright, shining eyes that held so much trust and excitement. A trust that may now be gone. And for what?
Delphine is lost in muffled engine-sound as she reclines somewhat stiffly in her Business class window seat. The passenger beside her is snoring, sufficiently relaxed by the last of the several mini-vodkas he ordered — one which he graciously offered to share with a twinkle in his eye. The unbroken cap on the smooth bottle beckons her from her one carry-on, but she decides to wait for it.
She may need that later, when she's off the plane.