At the airport. Mediocrity looms in the fluorescence. Am I mediocre? Actually, forget it. That sentence
might as well end in a period. You don’t answer those sorts of questions for yourself, the world will let
you know in due time. I’m a slit-throat chicken. Head still on but running around madly, neck wobbling
and oozing life, running into walls. I’m waiting for my flight. It’s late. Almost tomorrow. I can see a
military man on the ground lying on his back, his hand on his stomach limply displaced each time heaves
a breath. The few, the proud, the airport food poisoned. Flight delayed. I walk through the airport to kill
time. Another one of our impossible phrases, to kill time. We’re the wet mophead that time the trusty
janitor keeps wringing out and cleaning the laminate floors of the universe with. Catacombs criss-cross
the metallic dungeons of this castle. Unrelenting in their luminescence and aesthetic arbitrariness. I have
reached an orange room. It is orange from construction lights. They hiss at me. A large fan tells me in a
windy voice to turn around. I can’t. I am a moth and the light is on ahead and my flight doesn’t board for
an hour. Beyond are the exits to the sky. I dream of tractor beams caressing me in warm tunnels bound for
the heavens and I wish I would’ve paid more attention to the times in my life when I was close to feeling
that way. I still can. This place won’t let me. Maybe I can reminisce in the stratospheric, blue leather
waiting room. I keep walking and seeing inlets and deltas into the various sectors. The beeping green
lights of security and lines of stoic, soon to be passengers inject the thought of a department store into my
mind. This place sells airline tickets, sure, but they sell life and death here too. I stand and stare through a
massive window overlooking the tarmac and think of her and wonder if she’s cried today. I felt as though
she had, but only for a moment. Thirty minutes til’ boarding. I spin around. I had probably walked a mile,
maybe more. I think about how funny it would be if I missed my plane after all this. Funny to God,
maybe. He would laugh at my lust for overthinking like a casino owner watching someone on CCTV who
can’t get up from the blackjack table. God makes his money like the rest of us. I’m moving faster now
because my schedule has become real the same way the alarm clock interrupts morning daze. A young
girl runs with her family in the opposite direction and trips. She sits defeated and I think of being a father.
What would I do at that moment? Could I forget everything else and remember she is only a child? The
path I trod before now blurs past me as a pastel underworld; I swim the river Styx. I’m nearly there. I
snipe clocks with my eyes and dread the coming boredom. I scold myself for the immediacy of my
presupposition. Maybe there’ll be something good to watch. Maybe I can sleep. Maybe is one of my
favorite words, it grants me freedom and keeps the wolves in the shadows. Wolves get hungry though and
I rarely carry extra food. I find a seat near where I was before and wait for my group to be called. The
people around me are sleeping, some with their eyes open, and in a brief thought that clatters around like
a hotel pan I wish for all of them to know peace. Something sails over my head and I look up to see a
small bird in the rafters. It moves back and forth anxiously. No one else notices the small bird behind the
TV. It swoops down for a crumb and lands a couple feet from my shoes. We stare at each other. This time
on purpose, I wish for peace for the bird. And if that bird is to spend its life in this airport I wish for it to
find the window I had some thirty minutes ago and look out at the same tarmac and instead of thinking of
her think of sticks and nests and worms and sky. Group A done. Group B done. Group C done. My turn. I
am finally walking through the accordion hallway. I am greeted and directed towards my seat. I stow my
luggage, place myself, and look out of the window at the tarmac. This time I think of the bird, and its
sticks and nests and worms and sky. I think of what it means to have wings.
