That time I cried on the tarmac of LAX I thought the flight attendant was going to make me blow into a paper bag. She was a nice and pretty lady and I had an aisle seat. She thought I was afraid of flying and brought me water. Always it was the second leg of the fourteen-hour trip over the Pacific, when you knew you were back on North American soil, that made me feel like the world was not round. It was its own shadow chasing itself in circles. Always here, not there. Always there, not here. I looked into the flight attendant’s perfectly made-up face knowing she must have seen it all. Ah, I see, she said, it’s someone. Then as if deciding there was nothing more she could do, she gave me a squeeze on the shoulder and moved away to let the other passengers through. A fat man sat down next to me before takeoff, filling his seat and a portion of mine like Valium. I woke up later somewhere over Middle America. A mother with a colicky baby was pacing back and forth by the emergency exit.
Middle America
Tiffany Hsieh was born in Taiwan and moved to Canada at the age of fourteen. Her fiction and poetry have appeared or are forthcoming in Juked, the Malahat Review, Passages North, and elsewhere. Her work has been nominated for Best Microfiction and Best Small Fictions. She lives in southern Ontario.