Airports Are Quiet Now and I Can’t Get To You From Any of Them

Cinnabon is open     but all they have is coffee
a man wiping the counters tells me adding three creams will hold me over

the departure lane is overrun by white Dodge Rams     like yours
some only have room enough for us

my favorite jeans are out of style    my skin looser
Hudson News magazines tell me I’ve got it all wrong

dirty water sky emptied of birds              I had forgotten
the loneliness of spending three hours touching elbows with a stranger

when Katrina hit I called to ask if you’d seen the water
in the hotel lobby where we’d been standing weeks before

that street where a man drove his Cadillac into the bumper of a yellow cab
because he was rubber-necking at me standing on the sidewalk

wearing those pants you loved        leopard print stretched
across all I had to show         for myself 

imagine an inhale that holds the low belly in    lifted into rib cage borders
all sternum and slack-jawed sips of breath

I crisscross a cardigan over my chest
try to name the sound of a small boy       who can’t yet tie two words together        

whose finger points to the tram overhead carrying travelers
shifting bags         from one shoulder to the other

his grandmother follows his gaze    there it goes     say bye bye
his brow furrows as the red machine disappears into an empty hole

                                                     its passengers leaving for wherever gone is