This airport is an old, grudging soul. Dull, overcrowded, and weary. I resent it, yet I hold it tenderly in my chest. So many of my chapters began and ended beneath its dim lights; it is the physical threshold of leaving and returning, of becoming and letting go.
Once, I escaped here to see her, only to break and reschedule my flight, doing everything to vanish on the very day she was born. That shadow of guilt has never left me, a quiet promise I renew every year to make things right.
Now, I sit and ponder: was it ever about these gates and concourses? Or was it always Jakarta, holding up a mirror to my heart?
