It's taken nearly 3 years or 8. Depending on how you count it. But I have successfully changed my identity, I think. I say "I think" because of my own insecurity. (Because I'm afraid it wont stick). But I call it a success because I have seen the way people have changed the way they see me. And the way people I know see airplanes. I love it. I get photos, cards, texts...and so on. Because people I love see an airplane and think "Elaine!". Yes. Success. It's not all of who I am and it is not all of who I want to be. But I am days away from finishing my mechanic's program and only just realizing I am in a new chapter of life and one which I have fought so very hard to get to. I am battle weary, but I guess I should be. It's nearly the end.

10 of 10

I have two tool boxes.
One I use to fix airplanes
And the other?
I fill with colors and all of the tools
I need to explain how I see the world.
I keep painter’s tape in both.
Not that I have ever tried to tape an airplane together
Or even that I use it so often in art.
Rather, it is a reminder that these two worlds
Are not so far apart. 

Artists need tools and precision.
They work in this same world after all,
With its limits, tangibility, and laws.
Mechanics need imagination and creativity and longing too.
Who else made the impossibility of flight possible?
It was not for a love of law,
Though maybe for love.

Or maybe just to tell gravity
That it was not the only authority we may appeal to,
That the ground does not own us,
And that we will decide how far is far enough.
So I keep painter’s tape
To remind me to always question
If the limits that are set
Are the limits that have to be.

Do they serve a purpose?
Can I color outside of those lines?

Painter’s tape is such a brilliant blue
That I cannot look at it
Without wondering if I too may try
To sail straight through the sky into the sun
In a last glance with only smoke
And wax tears to show behind me.
Perhaps not,
But only if I find my bearings.
Fly over the prison wall,
But stop at the sun.


My two worlds are held together by this blue
This brilliant, unmistakable blue.
And each gives the other context,
A strong foundation to build on
And a little something to look forward too,
If only in my mind's eye.