The Airport

Sitting in the airport chair, my once hopeful eyes are downcast, full of despair and regret over what's lost.  A different loss than the one before- the one that caused this powerful, internal revolution that has chosen me to be its unwilling participant and has placed me in this position to begin with. The truth is there is this sinking feeling, which feels so heavy- heavy enough to cause me and the chair to collapse right through the floor.  I don't care- I wouldn't fight it- but I worry there is no one to pull me up from the wreckage once it's all over.

The people around me are engaged in their lives- unaware of the struggle that I silence within. And maybe that's for the best for anyone else laden with this burden or even privy to it, I worry, would succumb and collapse under its weight. Their eyes are unchanged by my unseeable albatross and their lives appear to be filled with hope and promise as mine appears to be ending.
All around, the chatter and good natured frenzied energy of the airport which once enlivened me is now dead to me.The only thing of significance, the only thing that really matters anymore is the weight of what's lost.  I sit.  The receptors on my brain that control my body's learned response to the invigorating sights, the sounds, the images have become inhibited and the beautiful promise of what a wait in the airport once held no longer generates warmth. I liken myself to a mute.  But what I cannot say with my mouth radiates from my body like the fatal rays from a gamma ray burst.
This airport suddenly morphs into all the other airports I've been through before and that served as a portal to varied undirected destinies- one of agitation and gross uncertainty, hope and love, resolute enduring to push forward and finally a sad and final end- it would seem.  How can I?  A rush of nostalgia mixed with memories of piercing, fleeting cheerfulness and the certainty of one what was supposed to be a never-ending promise now render me will-less. 

12/6/16