Aboarding

This is the final call. Here in this intercom voice and warping floor tiles

I am transplanted between the orbitless so I peel an orange to

hear something tear. Gate 45 is splitting into two mouths and neither is

pronouncing your name. I traced it in the fog of a vending machine’s

glass and it smeared like hoofprints on thawing asphalt. I will wait

            for you where arrival dissolved into architecture, tarmac giving

back nothing but luggage circling like riderless things tugging reins

            against absence. Here. Where the PA glitched is where the jet bridge

yawned is where your maiden name frayed into longitude, altitude and

             a snowstorm in Morse. Isn’t it funny? Your suitcase came before

you did, tag stamped from the town you said you’d leave in your next life,

full of cracked compact mirror and three half-knit gloves, vitamins

deliquescing into soft-shelled prayers. I will wait for you, in this terminal

built from maybe and lean against the gate wall sleeping like a

horse. The gate light pulses like a dying throat lozenge. Your name

is thinned out again by the frostbitten so I think of the time you

wore a saddle on your back and turned into velvet when I tried to climb on,

sliding through the floors. Remember? In dreams you then pressed

into ginseng and the electric hum of winter heat like your mare being brushed

at night two decades ago when your love was still starch-thin, creased

into every hem. When boarding begins, a woman walks past with hay stuck

to her shoes, pressing her hands flat on her thighs like she’s taming

something before it bucks. I do the same, and mouth your name as animal.

            I will remain seated before exhalations in foal-toned lullabies could

de-ice the wings. If I am doing a good job, braid my hair into tight, uneven ropes

down my back, cut it, and hold it to my ear like a shell. I carry what you

never said in my molars, biting down when the cabin shakes. I will wait for you,

            tail-twitching and bridled. I will wait for you, where windows flicker with

static instead of sky and where the air feels one hoof short of gallop. I will wait.