The Skies Have No Memories   The skies have no memories, Yesterday is lost and gone, Tomorrow is but a dream, The past fades like smoke on the air The future not yet what it seems The skies have no memories.   She hits the send on the email, breathes an inaudible sigh, and turns from the computer. Picking up her flight bag she glances once around the room and walks out the door. Outside she stops momentarily, the breeze a promise on her cheek, the sky a bright azure blue, she reaches for those invisible threads. She smiles, listening for a moment to their hum, and when she finally turns and walks from the door her steps are just a wee bit quicker and lighter. "Hey Vicky! When you gonna finally to your ride?" the young uniformed man behind the flight counter calls out to her as she turns the corner for the hanger. "Just as soon as you manage to find me a plane and an examiner on the same afternoon." She shoots back at her instructor with a throaty laugh that echoes through the hangar. She watches the odometer on the old car roll around. 10,000 clicks since she bought it. The same route everyday, day in day out, the same routine everyday. Funny how quickly our minds assimilate, and accustom themselves. How quickly the dream became a routine. Eighteen months ago, she could only imagine hungrily what it might be like, now its all a routine, and not quite the way she envisioned it would be. But what dream ever is. How many roads to the future had she looked down imagining what they might be like, how many times and some twist or bump in the road that could not be seen from the distance, thrown the whole path off into a wildly new direction. Still she imagines the future, knowing now that it won’t be anything like what she can see from here, yet still eager to taste the surprises that fate holds in store, even though like as not they won’t most be pleasant ones. The end result will always be as it should be, will always be satisfying, even after it has become routine. She walks slowly from the office, a small smile, lost in thought, sated, yet hungry. The dance of words a tease, a poor bumbling substitute for those things that have no words. Always aware that she continues to grapple to try and give life to those things that only live inside her mind, delicate things of gossamer wings, watching them fall from her lips, heavy and leaden, struggling to live with the handicap she has imposed upon them. Words are all she has to convey them, so aware, more of what is unsaid than what is said. Knowing a single touch, the right trick of the eye, says so much more, knowing that some things can only be said without words. She’s become comfortable living alone, although the road to that place was often hard and bitter, it softened her even as it tempered her. More content inside her own thoughts, she learned the true value of other’s thoughts. She licks her lips savouring the taste of his thoughts in her mind, but its only words, there is so much more, she tastes it as one in the desert tastes a single sip of cool spring waters, knowing that to rejoice in those waters, to bath in abandon in them is forbidden, knowing she will respect the taboo. Knowing moreso that she will respect him, honour what it is that makes him &ldots; him. Knowing that were it any other way it would not quench her thirst. Is it lust? Is it passion? Is it spring fever? The reality bears little resemblance to the dream, always. She laughs, "yep all the good ones are either married or gay." 2am. David’s screams, have subsided into low moans, he’ll be asleep soon. She rises from her vigil at the top of the stairs, stretching out her stiff legs, the bands the bind her armour to her loosening a notch. She goes to the kitchen, taking the bottle down from its high shelf, and pours herself two carefully measured fingers of the amber liquid. Locking the kitchen door behind her she steps out into the cool night air of the deck and lights her pipe. For a time she sips the scotch, and the lingering sweet smell of tobacco, and looks out upon the stars. Thinking for a moment of all the nights of stars, letting the essence of those memories wash over her. How many stars, how many nights, how many tears, how many laughs, how many faces, how many voices, how many roads have led to this place? The bands loosen another notch. She feels the first note of self pity begin to creep in through the cracks, and she tightens them again. She drains the scotch, locks the door, and climbs the stairs again to a bed of dreamless sleep. She moves through her pre-flight, touching here, looking there, all with a practised hand and eye, not truly thinking about what she was doing, rather feeling for the anomalies that spell disaster. She steps into the cockpit feeling its warm familiarity. Hands running over the controls knowing them intimately. As the engine fires she feels the rumble within her, feels the tense awareness within her crank up another notch as she inches the throttles forward. Clearances received, winds noted, and the long expanse of runway lies before her. Like a doorway, the liminal point, neither flying nor not flying, but the play in between that is both. She feels the surge of power as she pushes the throttles to full, feels the sluggish weight of this being of the air still confined to the ground as it rolls down the runway. She feels its ache to be free of the confining earth and answers its need with a firm hand easing back the controls. And then that precious moment, that unbearable lightness of being as their wings catch the skies and they are free once more! She is never quite sure if she actually laughs out loud at that moment, she is sure that she always laughs in her heart. In those first moments they run in their release, laughing and playing till finally settling back into a sweet steady rhythm. She closes her eyes for a moment and breathes deep the sweet taste of the skies. Time and again they play out the same scene, yet each is different, each as precious and as singular as a snowflake. Each filling her with a renewed sense of awe. And within each one comes that bittersweet moment when they know that it must end. Reluctantly they turn for what they laughingly call their destination, for here in the skies is their true destination. They slowly descend to the circuit, a long a lingering kiss goodbye. Slowly turning final, approaching the doorway where once again they will meet the cold hard earth. She shuts down the engine with a final touch and steps down to the tarmac. April 1998.