Voicemail Poems

I. I fall in love every time I fly. Leaving Dallas: the medical student wearing headphones and a full headscarf just to forget her be-planed predicament. Above Tucson: the sorority sister with the strawberry hair whose father is waiting at the baggage claim; they leave, arms over shoulders over arms. In Denver. The woman in security: her bright eyes contradict the softening skin on her hands like Kleenex, like my mother’s. I desperately want to be travelling away from here with someone, with one of these walkabout-women at my side on a midnight-plane to anywhere: companionable silence, holding hands in anticipation. II. My parents call from twelve-and-a-half hours in the past to tell me that when they dropped me off for my flight to Seoul on the way out— they saw a woman striding confidently through the winding Sea-Tac security, carrying what they were sure was her whole life on her back, Emryse. She was going off somewhere. On her next adventure. I like to imagine her lived