Falling

I first saw her after I boarded the plane. We sat in the back, so I could see steady stream of passengers coming down the aisle and when I saw her making her way to me, carefully negotiating the narrow space between the seats, she took my breath away. She looked to be in her twenties and was with her mother, I think. I watched her put both of their pieces of luggage in the overhead compartment, tiptoeing to reach.

She has lightly curled fair golden hair that runs behind her ears and down to her shoulders. Her creamy white skin was radiant. A pert nose on which a pair of wire rimmed glasses were perched belonged to a face with clean and subdued, but angelic features. She had the small, slender body of someone who was comfortable with herself. But the it may be her neck that I was the most focused on, its white, soft skin had small hint of pink. I watched it curve from her jawline down to her collarbone. I could tell she was good, kind person from the way she moved, from the way she spoke to her mother, from the way she carried herself. It's a wonder that I've never imagine beauty this way in my head, the way this girl looked, but that's what she was. It is with no qualifier or reservation that I say that I think she was the most beautiful-not just pretty or cute, but beautiful-person I've ever laid my eyes on.

She sat across from me and I stole glances as often as I could. I watched her thumb through her copy of "Nocturnes" by Kazuo Ishiguro. I tried to see what she was watching on the entertainment screen on the headrest of the seat in front of hers if only to see if we had the same taste in movies. The angle wasn't right and I still don't know what she was watching. When she asked the flight attendant for an adapter for the headphones, I detected an Irish accent, a faint one so pleasing my ears that I wish I had the nerve to talk to her so I could hear it some more. She dropped a pen a couple of times and I reached down to pick it up so that maybe she would look at me and say thank you, but she was quicker to reach both times, so I would pull back before making the attempt because it looked like I was too eager.

I caught her eye once when I turned and saw her looking straight at me. She turned away immediately and I wonder if she was looking at me or the view out my window. The view out my window probably. Or maybe she saw me in the periphery staring at her throughout the flight and wanted to see who this stranger was.

Our plane ride was short, only an hour--fine on most days but felt incredibly short on that day. Couldn't they have a storm, or a freak blizzard in August that would blanket the runway, causing us to circle for another half an hour? Would that be too much to ask?

After we landed, I struggled to catch a glimpse of her as she made her way through the gate. I saw her again collecting luggage off the carousel in the baggage collection area. And then she was gone, disappearing into New York through the revolving doors.

It is now five days later and I can't stop thinking of her. But the image I have her is dissolving. I still know that feeling that I felt when I saw her walking toward me down the aisle on the plane. I remember the idea of how stunning she was. But the details are disappearing. When I close my eyes, I struggle to combine all my memories into one distinguishable image. I grasp for the disparate visions: the way her glasses rested on her delicate nose, the sight of her bare arm when she removed her fleece, the motion of her bending and putting her passport into her bag, the color of her hair. I fear that they will not last for long because even with the lights off and sounds muted, I can no longer remember how exactly she was beautiful, only that she was and I will never see her again.