DUB

We’re still awaiting your incoming aircraft, booms across the speakers. The line grows as your patience wanes, your food ran out ages ago and if you lived here you’d be home by now. It’s a different airline than you know, it’s a different hub and the makeup of the cabin doesn’t look the same as usual. Still, every airport vibrates to the same rhythm, still every ticket burns the same fire into your back pocket and you do not fret. You have no connections to miss: you are only going home.

A tan fades from your legs, slinking off in silence like you didn’t know it was fleeing. Like you didn’t know you set your foot not only on home ground but on a season of getting back to work, of putting your shoulder to the wheel and of making things right. Like I didn’t know how I spend my days is how I spend my life and it won’t look like this anymore. They claim the flight will board in five minutes but the hours pass, it begins to rain.

Take this last sulk through your lungs, breathe a deep sad breath and grate your weariness against your heart. I’m giving you these five minutes. Then dust yourself off and get the fuck back up again.

I’ll wait.