Page 110 - Herzlia HS Magazine 2021

On this, we could never agree.

My knees hit my chest in the bubble shaped cockpit, a nest of buttons
and switches all shining for my attention.

Ironic how, at the end of a journey, one remembers the beginning.

The newspapers will print the accomplishment under my two brothers’

names; the consequences of being female in 19th century Europe.

The bird rumbles like thunder, like a predator. It is a primal vibration,
spreading through my body as I adjust the controls of my awakening
creature. She is hungry, desperate to reunite with the vastness of empty

space yawning above us. But then, so am I.

My world narrows to the tang of burnt metal in my nostrils, the warmth
of the engine beneath me. Air whips hair against my face. Makeshift

runway moves beneath me, tentatively at first, as if testing whether it will
be held back. Then faster, wheels grinding into the pathway. Gleefully

quickening its pace as it meets no resistance, blurring the gravel into a
belt of grey. All at once, the ground falls away. The nose of the plane lifts
towards the sky.

Man was not made to fly, my father swore to me once. But I am not a

man.

Blue gushes into me, flooding my senses until I’m breathing it in, tasting

it on my tongue. Not blue like the ocean, not gentle and serene. It is
blue like the hottest part of a fire. Alive. Electric.

Whoever said passion and danger were red has never met the sky.

Michaela Perkel