Paper Airplanes

We found sticky notes all over the house.
Crumpled in drawers, stuck
between pages of books
on forestry, folded into
paper airplanes.
Grandpa’s words littered
the crevices of that house.
On a rainy day, when
I’d search for a book to read,
I would find messy
scribbles in the margins.

I remember when I was a kid,
Grandpa sent
my cousins and me into
a 7-Eleven with nothing
but a Ziploc bag of coins.
Employees gathered around us
shoving $5 bills into our hands, please
just take it, as we stood at
the Slurpee machine counting
out quarters and pennies.
I didn’t understand
why people were offering
us money.

We had just come from the park–
dirt coating our legs and sweaty
bodies. We had played zombie
tag and hide and seek. Grandpa
played too, flying
model airplanes
in the open field. We never
stopped to think that Grandpa
loved the park just
as much we did.
Our begging to go
was his invitation to fly.

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Natalie is currently a senior at Purdue University studying Psychology and Creative Writing. In her spare time, she loves long distance running, drinking chai lattes, and dancing. Her work can be found in the Allegheny Review.