Contrail

Whenever grandfather’s around, he always told me stories of how… tantalising, the sky was. Whether they were from his fighter pilot times, or his aerobatic flying times, those stories of challengers and daredevils peppered my childhood. I never remembered all of his stories; I was still holding my teddy bear sitting beside him under the hangar at the time, and he’s never around for long, not when he’s normally at the airbase he’s stationed at. But in the end, I understood something about him. The way he told those stories with a voice almost gasping for air… His eyes, half-shaded by all those wrinkles, gazing up to “The blue that stretched far beyond our reach…” How he drew long breaths and sighs between stories… His description of the sky as something from a different world… That’s who he always was; someone who never actually belonged on the ground.

I was too young to understand what happened to him. For all I know, father could’ve told me he went back to his airbase and I would’ve been none the wiser. …I should’ve remembered to thank my parents when they chose not to hide it from me despite, well… me still being a kid. After some days, we went to the meadow full of windmills beside grandfather’s private small runway together,

To scatter his ashes.

Father didn’t need to do anything. The moment he took the lid off, white dust flew from the jar. It flew and flew, like the contrail of an aerobatic plane. It must’ve been the wind—it definitely was the wind… but… something in me wanted to believe… no, knew… that it’s him. Up there was where he belonged, and this time he didn’t need wings to fly. My eyes were getting blurry, so I closed them. …I could’ve sworn there was a faint rumble of a four-cylinder, like when his KZ VIII neared our runway to land. Or, in this case… took off. I rubbed my eyes and opened them again. The contrail stopped coming out from the jar. Bit by bit, the white line dissipated. Before I realised, my hand reached out to the blue.

The contrail faded.

I sniffled.

He climbed up.

I called him, but only a trembling whisper came out from my lips.

The contrail was gone.

He was gone.

To the blue that stretched far beyond our reach.

The tantalising blue.

The beautiful blue.

The blue that I would one day fly my wings towards, for that’s where I would be.

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