NONREV

By Eva Alom

4am.

Lay before me a field of blue lights

Brighter than a million miler medallions’ manifestations of elite shine could ever hope to be.

If 5am was for the birds, then 4am was for the people who made the birds fly.

And it was us, wasn’t it, who made them fly?

For what is flight without roots to come from and who is a bird without a destination to dream of?

Envy not the glamorous sex symbols of the sky, for we are our own. Longing still for adventure, authentically faking it because our collars are not white or blue, darlings, they’re chameleon’s camouflage.

My own freeze frame record scratch moments happened there in the sky when I realized I could be anyone I wanted to be, be anywhere I want to be, for just a few days.

Me, a working-class girl of Tennessee, sipping champagne amongst the bourgeois and laughing to myself, knowing I had infiltrated their gated world if only for a moment.

And I loved traveling with that secret.

And travel with that secret I did.

And if I never return, let it be known that I regret nothing, not a single messy dramatic or lonely moment.

Not spending my 22nd birthday alone on the bench outside the P.F. Chang’s in the Atlanta airport because there was not a seat for me to get back home.

Not waking up in the Bahamas on that November morning to find my brand new camera stolen alongside my dreams for my country.

Not falling asleep alone in the Hermitage museum of Amsterdam after my spontaneous red eye, not going alone on a romantic canal cruise through the city and taking in every sight for no one but myself. While not having a credit card, only to take out the taillight while trying more than to visit the London zoo and inexplicably see the animals everyone around me appeared to be to navigate the island’s narrow they previously knew to roam free falling in love with each other I was alleyways no more than 15 minutes behind the cages. But no cab would falling in love too. In love with the after he caved. give that little brown family a ride world and my ability to be in it.

Not spending 24 unexpected hours in the Atlanta airport after we missed our flight to Aruba, that day we found a cello player and danced and filmed and photographed and made our own airport scavenger hunt and laughed like teenagers and I learned something about how to live that day.

Not finding a way to get into the Sky lounge of Tokyo’s airport and pretending to understand the world stock market while drinking beer with the world’s most pretentious businessmen and telling them “no one, yet” when they ask who the hell I am.

Not spending the night in the eerily perfect Singapore airport and talking for hours with the security guard over his long-lost dreams of becoming a singer sacrificed to the overbearing government’s wishes.

Not breaking 8 years of strict veganism to eat an egg omelet because it’s all that was available after hiking to the top of an Indonesian volcano to watch the sunrise. Not taking a night bus across multiple islands after having over $2000 worth of stuff stolen from my backpack. I still had tickets to a concert the next day.

Not begging the Santorini car rental associate to let me rent a car despite not yet being old enough, despite

not having a credit card, only to take out the taillight while trying to navigate the island’s narrow alleyways no more than 15 minutes after he caved.

Not going to Tel Aviv for only a weekend because that was all I could spare. Not listening to anyone recount their spiritually significant trips to the same land and knowing that all I did was crash an extravagant pool party and drink wine with someone I met in Rome 3 years prior who probably should have stayed a one week fling.

Not crying as I, hungry and shaking, carried my bag up 5 flights of stairs in the dirtiest, sketchiest, cheapest hostel in London because I could not afford anything else after spending all my money in Ireland and not making it on the flight back home. Short by one seat. Earlier that day, as the pretty red headed redcoat who looked so much more polished in the very same uniform that I too wore at home escorted me back to the lobby I told myself never again. I told myself it was not worth it going broke only to not be guaranteed a seat back but…

Truly I knew I didn’t mean it. I sat there and cried for 10 minutes and then I bought a ticket to London. When I landed in Heathrow I remembered a story of my father, traveling to the USA for the first time as a child, not yet knowing that it would be permanent.

A day long layover in London and with 24 hours to spare that little brown family wanted nothing

more than to visit the London zoo and inexplicably see the animals they previously knew to roam free behind the cages. But no cab would give that little brown family a rideand so they stayed in the airport until their flight. Every fiber of my being told me to run to the London zoo in that moment, but I refrained and took comfort in the fact I could come back another day. And what a divine thing of freedom that was. What a loophole I had found.

Because between those travelers in suits talking too loudly on the phone about expense reports as if they have an audience and the happy couples embarking on their honeymoons still high off the moment, between the soldiers returning home or the prisoners forced to leave it… Between every person in those airports who had some semblance of purpose for being there. In the middle of it all were travelers like me. Completely and utterly purposeless, but completely and utterly open to anything that might happen, and any connection that might form.

Sometimes it felt like a video game. Like if things got too difficult I could just hit home and return, be it middle seat or first class, Boeing or mad dog. Either way, without knowing I knew I had a way home. And I knew home base was filled with others who didn’t quite fit in and didn’t know exactly where to go but we loved life and we loved it together.

So if I never return, please let it be known that I regret nothing.