EWR

Late winter dusk over New Jersey, you’ve seen those cranes a thousand times and they always put you at ease. The small of your back is still damp from Penn Station stress, still damp from early morning goodbyes, your chest trembles and it’s not travel nerves. We read travel magazines and make five-year plans that forget career ladders and retirement savings:  it’ll take at least six months to get through South America.

Go through the motions of airport security, the steps are fluid now, fluent to your muscles, you haven’t run in days since your knee complained again, you are older than you once were. Talk to strangers in the terminal, consider hunger against the length of your flight. Your skin longs for fingertips you’ve come to take for granted, but if you can only make it five hours west across the Rockies you think you could be convinced to be distracted. There’s a mountain sunrise there that knows your name, there’s a slow drive into a valley that makes your heart grow a hundred times over, there’s a certain scent to airports that remind you who you are, and five years is a long game even when it’s only the beginning.