"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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