The Last Flight

by Julie Clark

It’s a complicated grief, not just the loss of my name and identity, but also the life I once hoped I’d have. The death of any dream deserves to be mourned, all its intricate facets touched one last time.

All choices had consequences. It was what you did with those consequences that mattered.

“You know, life is long. Lots of things can go wrong and still end up all right.”

That was the funny thing about regret. It lived inside of you, shrinking down until you could almost believe it had vanished, only to have it spring up, fully formed, called forward by people who meant you no harm.

That was the problem with wishes. They always led to others. Bigger ones. Trailing back in time, knot after knot needing to be untangled, never noticing how they wrapped around you until they pulled you down.

Are we who we say we are, or do we become the person others see? Do they define us by what we choose to show them, or what they see despite our best attempts to conceal it?