POEM: "I am Twenty-Four," by Diane Dolphin

I am Twenty-Four,

buckled into an airplane seat, tangible consequence

of that drunken night a month ago at Leo’s bar

where I’d bragged about backpacking foreign cities

and shores with my camera and notebook.

Dublin’s my first destination, I slurred; it came out destiny.

So you always say — when? asked Laurel, her friends —

my new friends — egging me on.

She walked me to the gate and kissed me.

            Revving engines; I brace for G-force, the lift,

                                                lurch and tumble of turbulence.

The woman beside me in blue boiled wool — my mother’s age,

had she lived — looks up, smiles vaguely,

turns her page.

The flight attendant drags out the drink cart, a sign of faith

that this tonnage will not plummet, that somehow

the currents will sustain us. I wash down a seasickness pill

with Jamesons and ginger ale,

drift on the honey scent of Laurel’s hair, aware of how

her eyes mirror the cyan sea ranging

boundlessly beneath me.

Copyright (c) 2014 Diane Dolphin. "I am Twenty-Four," was published in the Naugatuck River Review (Winter, 2014), and was a Semi-Finalist in the Naugatuck River Review 2013 poetry competition.