I woke up from a dream that felt like it stretched across lifetimes.
In it, I was travelling with my mom, trying to find the right gate at an impossibly massive airport – a place so large, it made Hong Kong’s airport look like a pit stop. No matter how much we searched, we never quite got there.
People I knew – Jon, Albert, Jenny, Laura, were all there at first, waiting for their flights, but in my search for the right gate, I lost them. I never got to say goodbye.
Then I saw it.
Beyond the airport, past a railing, there was an open field – vast, rolling, untouched by time. Dappled sunlight drifted across the hills, and in the distance, a white plane sat, silent and still, as if waiting for me.
It was mine. The plane I was supposed to take home, but it was too far away, fenced off, and unreachable.
I stood there, watching the light move over the landscape, feeling a strange sense of peace and loss at the same time. I thought about all the places I had been, all the people I had known, and how so much of life is spent trying to get somewhere, trying to find the right place, trying to belong.
Maybe I missed my flight. Maybe I missed my chance to say goodbye. Maybe I was never meant to get on that plane at all.
I turned away, and somewhere deep inside me, I felt something let go.
