Baggage Claim - Logan Airport: 6 a.m.
Allison Geier
I have three hours.
I walk like I have three minutes.
The vending machines are empty.
No coffee.
Keys clank in a short woman's hands
She opens the only snack cart in the terminal
And sells me an expensive cup of cheap coffee
The terminal is lifeless
Even the short woman leaves.
Across from the baggage claim, I choose an empty burgundy chair,
The coffee burns my tongue.
In an hour or so
Four Asian women in hates
Sit down in the chairs next to me
One of them has pigtails
A pretty, flirtatious woman walks by
In a short skirt and heels
She runs her fingers through her long hair,
Pushes it back
Turns her head just so
To make the hair fall over her face
I reach for my coffee and realize my leg is twitching
The cup is cold now, but
I take the lid off and make whirlpools with the stirrer stick
A small woman with a duffle bag
Runs past two men in white uniforms
Until she reaches the escalator and peacefully
Glides upward-perfectly still
My feet twitch now,
I just when the buzzer rings on the baggage carousel
The red light flashes three times before the conveyor belt starts to rotate
A small boy sits on the ticket counter
About three years old
Blonde hair in a bowl cut that only a mother could give
I remember a blonde head, peeking behind the green plastic shutters
On a Fisher Price playhouse
Running little legs with tiny shoes-
Six years now - no photographs
Six years...
The buzzer sounds again over the empty conveyor belt
The little blonde boy kicks his feet against the ticket counter.
His mother pulls him towards her, rests him on her hip.
The first of the luggage comes through the black rubber strips,
People clump around the carousel.
I wonder if I'll recognize-
After six years.
Six years...
And three hours
In front of the baggage claim.
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