Qualified for Elsewhere

They board quietly. I set the course.

The woman takes the seat beside her daughter. Too close.

The girl doesn't object.

The woman says she used to study languages. French first. Then Italian. She could have traveled.

She says it calmly, as if listing qualifications.

She didn't know she was pregnant until the fourth month. She says it like a mistake discovered too late.

After that, she adds, there was no real choice.

The girl looks straight ahead.

The woman lists what stopped: the courses, the trips, the versions of herself that never left home.

She says motherhood arrived without permission. She does not say what left.

She says this with precision, not grief.

The girl presses her forehead to the glass. The dark reflects both of them.

The woman says they travel together now. She presents it as closeness.

The girl asks how long the trip will take.

The woman answers instead of me.

I do not correct her.

She had planned a different life. A child arrived instead. She never said it was a substitution.

I carry people. Their words travel with them.