I am on the airplane. I am in my special seat, near the bathroom. I love the airplane bathroom because it is the one place where you can feel like you are on a spacecraft. I wish they divided up the airplane into bathroom-size pods for everyone. You could adjust the lights to cycle through soothing colors and control the temperature and music. You could press a hello button to make a dim red light blink once in the pod of your neighbor, with them having one too. Interaction would not go beyond the hello button. The hello button is a fantasy of mine, regarding you, if you are estranged from me.
Estrangement is difficult because it is total. Zero is much further from one than one is from a hundred. I would be so happy just to have a button that would make a dim red light blink once in the house of an estranged person, with them having one too. We’d hardly ever press it, but I would press it on your birthday, or when I was missing you, or forgiving myself, or forgiving you, or wishing you would forgive me. Sometimes I feel that a one-worded language would make everyone on earth feel so close with each other that we no longer even needed the one word. Perhaps I want the hello button so that I no longer need to press it.
Gal McMahon is an artist, writer, and programmer living in New York City. She has red hair and a small dog named Tiptoe. Her most recent residency was at the School for Poetic Computation. Her nonfiction is also forthcoming in Litro Magazine. This summer, she is studying Hebrew at Middlebury College. Her website is mgmcmahon.com, and her Instagram is @femwad.
