Lunch

She slides into one of those invalid-blue discomfort chairs
under ‘Gate 21’ where her future lay refueling
a tiny brown paper lunch-bag perched in her diminutive lap.
I admire the distinctiveness with which she slips
from this unlikely sack a half dozen oysters
artfully arranged on seaweed and how
with the gusto of a gossip savoring overheard conversations
she slurps them into mollusk oblivion.

I pinch my inner arm.She presses her tongue along the corners of her mouth
and her skirts apparently without her assistance
appear to rise and crowd her thighs.

Certain that I am deceived by a trick of terminal light
I stare as from the worn and torn receptacle housing the gutted bivalves
a platter of tossed greens emerges coated with crumbled chèvre
and a tasteful sprinkling of fresh raspberries.

I determine I am witnessing the impossible

She pulls out a seven inch tower of Mocha Fantasy
when her flight is called nibbling off a small chunk
with unconcealed regret she replaces her fantastic post-repast indulgence
into its chimeric culinary bindle and as she takes her place
in the slow moving line a gust of air conditioned fate
holds her self-determined skirts poised like a hula-hoop
about her rolling derrière.

Now her plane is not my plane so I do not try to follow
my feet firmly planted on the ground. Later
I will be sure so sure
that I have been privy to some mystery
that I will begin buying tickets cheap ones,
at first, to nearby locations just to roam the terminal
hoping she will reappear later still
I will begin to fly farther and farther
spending more and more time in terminals around the globe

When I find her again I won’t hesitate
I’ll follow, find a way
to lay my head in her magnanimous skirts
and perhaps never return.

-Elizabeth Dancoes