by Emma R. Collins
the author at the cliffs of moher/photo by andrew andraka
A girl stands in the security line at Boston Logan International Airport, laden with bags and hopes and fears. She has said goodbye to her family, her friends, her nervous black mutt with the wide brown eyes and half-flopped ears. Nine months, an entire school year, is a long time to be away.
But she shouldn’t worry. Soon she’ll stand where giants once stood, the blue Atlantic foaming and dashing itself against an ancient causeway built of myth and legend. She’ll hear the western winds whipping along the boundless cliffs of Moher. She will feel the rains fall in Wicklow that soften her hair. She will know that the winking stars in Bray are the stars she has always known.
She will find herself lost in the Dublin streets that bubble with a thousand tongues and she will wonder at the familiar tucked against the new. She will spot the golden arches of a McDonald’s, but duck into a fish and chip shop that fries up the morning catch.
She will sit with scholars at Trinity College and walk across the ancient blue and grey and black cobblestones of Front Square. She will wander the forest paths of Glendalough softened with needles and the scent of still waters and sense the history that lies in the quiet shadows.
Soon she will forget her fears. She stretches to peek out the small airplane window and smiles seeing the new land below, verdant in the warm Irish sun.
Emma R. Collins of Ashby, Massachusetts, studies English and Psychology at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, and hopes to become a literary editor. She is currently studying at Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland.
