"200 Words About Airports" by Emryse Geye

I.

I fall in love every time I fly.

Leaving Dallas:

the medical student

wearing headphones and

a full headscarf just to forget her

be-planed predicament.

Above Tucson:

the sorority sister

with the strawberry hair whose

father is waiting

at the baggage claim; they leave,

arms over shoulders over arms.

In Denver.

The woman in security:

her bright eyes contradict

the softening skin on her hands

like Kleenex,

like my mother’s.

I desperately want

to be travelling away from here

with someone,

with one of these

walkabout-women at my side

on a midnight-plane to anywhere:

companionable silence,

holding hands in anticipation.

II.

My parents call from

twelve-and-a-half

hours in the past

to tell me that

when they dropped me off

for my flight to Seoul

on the way out—

they saw a woman

striding confidently through

the winding Sea-Tac security,

carrying what they were sure was

her whole life on her back, Emryse.

She was going off

somewhere.

On her next adventure.

I like to imagine

her lived-in day-pack,

her tried-and-tested shoes;

her threadbare smile.

I like to think she was happy

because

they told me they knew

that would be me,

one day, and

they told me she had been

alone.

————————————–

Emryse Geye called us from Portland, OR.

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