Wrist Deep

In The Terminal at LAX

I know that I must get this down now if I ever hope to get it down, that it is not excitement or so much as I had joked terror that fills me. There is more a tangible absence of such. There is more a cold touch that makes my heart ache heartache, and I finally know what that word means, which you may find a bit romantic, which is okay because it kind of is in a kind of quiet kind of way.

Every moment now burns with urgency as if the weeks before and the weeks after will not hold so much meaning as this week because it was the last. My eyes are like digital cameras and I am taking pictures of every moment every detail, reviewing them noting their poignancy. Oh that’s nice, I think as I catalog each one and file it away for posterity.

And I will be in this terminal for one more hour. How many details can I collect, I wonder. First my tiredness, the way it blankets every movement as if my limbs were still tucked away in sleep. It is still early. Second, the starkness of the terminal with its many empty rows of chairs black and metal and sleek leather each fitted with an empty cupholder. And I’m already looking back to strain meaning from their emptiness they’re so empty. Third, the dull sound of the air conditioning pushing so hard and so low, bearing the brunt of filling this space. Also soft music, harp and clarinet, weaving its way into the fabric of the terminal, vibrating the thread. Fourth, the antiseptic lighting, how hundreds of bulbs are pocketed in the ceiling like grass pocketed dew, how in the circular terminal the glass walls reflect them fling them in every dark direction of low-lying sky as if the stars had all settled down onto the surface of an ocean where I am underwater.

The terminal is starting to fill now and I am swimming in a sea of smart cellular telephones, portable laptop computers, personal music devices and headphones, digital handheld gaming systems and children.

The pain returning now, or more a hurt, a longing or more a pressure deep in my chest, a tension in my back neck and shoulders, joints. A tension in my joints tendons ligaments. A tension in my bones and me thinking, things were easier underwater. Loads less heavy, movement light. Acts of flying or hanging suspended in space forever, except for the part about not breathing.

But now they’re calling the numbers, numbers for planes sections destinations ages of passengers, numbers of rows, seats. And as they filed in the multitudes are filing out. And now they are calling my number. My number has been called.

And what once was a teaming terminal is now the storied remains of coffee cups coffee cups coffee cups.