I don’t even remember the layover in Ft. Lauderdale. I genuinely don’t. All the information I have from this event is pre-memory: letters and figures on a sheet of paper—my ticket—that said I was to be in Ft. Lauderdale for an hour and 10 minutes. Post memory: the ticket still exists. I am now in Costa Rica. The mitigating event must have occurred.

Did it though? Not only do I have no memory of this event, I know no one who was alongside to collaborate the realness of it.

If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it still make a noise?

Actual memory: the plane curving through the air at God-speeds, tipping a wing to San Jose in greeting, the pilot announcing the weather in measured & stylized tones. The landing: no bounce, the Spanish- and English-speaking passengers clapping (idiots. For what? Not crashing?) as the engines reversed with a manic swell and the plane, now an unwieldy land creature, taxied back into its womb until its next forgetting in the sky.

Maybe the plane knew?

Maybe the plane (not in the lack-of-marks on the wings, not in the blackbox) saw the alien craft twist into our dimension from the last one, saw it connect me directly, not through switches and cables, but through beams of colors and the vibration of visions.

I knew at the time, knew the babyblue beam was the best one (knew what was best for once) and followed it with my new friends’ help to the stasis of silence, where I spent an entire lifetime.

Maybe I landed a new person.