was

In the movies, we would root for the traveler
not to take the flight, to remember
the scarf left behind at the alley restaurant
straddling the old city cobblestones, to pick up
the note scrawled last-minute at the hotel,
pleading for just one more week.
Then the scene would pan out,
and we’d see the other lover with his or her head hung low,
disconsolate over a coffee, cold for hours,
while the rain clouds trembled before the downpour
took them. We’d sit up in our seats, so hopeful,
hearing the music crest and fall. And then,
the cab driver would prove to be a fortune teller
or a therapist, the storm would delay the flight,
that proverbial light bulb would snap awake
just at the last second, and the traveler
would simply turn around, baggage trailing uselessly
behind, and the city would reappear like a golden opportunity
before the credits started to roll.

But here, it’s the Los Angeles airport,
the endless gates and harsh lights
of duty-free shops and cantinas blinking
triple screens of summer baseball,
everything equally garish and discombobulated,
absent of an orchestra to choreograph
the denouement of this story.
And here we are hapless as insects flapping
toward a porch light, our best intentions
leveled by too much heat. I wish
I could find you in this maelstrom,
this labyrinthine love of ours.
I wish a Post-it would slip out
like a tarot card from under the column
of trash cans. I wish the announcer would call
my name and your voice would appear
on the other end of the little white telephone.
I wish the fluorescent strips of light would dim
just long enough for your silhouette
to sidle down the long hallway.

Instead, I am sitting in a row of identical
seats, watching the monitor tick the clock down
toward departure. The wait is not as endless
as I had imagined, and, if I am honest,
not as lonely. There are many of us here,
alert, scanning the ether for direction,
for evidence, for a word to coax us forward,
some gesture we will recognize as ours alone
to take us from what was
to what is,
to that small but necessary glimmer
of what will be.