"200 Words About Airports" by Emryse Geye

VOICEMAIL POEMS

I. I fall in love every time I fly. Leaving Dallas: the medical student wearing headphones and a full headscarf just to forget her be-planed predicament. Above Tucson: the sorority sister with the strawberry hair whose father is waiting at the baggage claim; they leave, arms over shoulders over arms. In Denver. The woman in security: her bright eyes contradict the softening skin on her hands like Kleenex, like my mother’s. I desperately want to be travelling away from here with someone, with one of these walkabout-women at my side on a midnight-plane to anywhere: companionable silence, holding hands in anticipation. II. My parents call from twelve-and-a-half hours in the past to tell me that when they dropped me off for my flight to Seoul on the way out— they saw a woman striding confidently through the winding Sea-Tac security, carrying what they were sure was her whole life on her back, Emryse. She was going off somewhere. On her next adventure. I like to imagine her lived-in day-pack, her tried-and-tested shoes; her threadbare smile. I like to think she was happy because they told me they knew that would be me, one day, and they told me she had been alone. ————————————– Emryse Geye called us from Portland, OR. SUPPORT US ON PATREON: http://patreon.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/guidelines http://facebook.com/voicemailpoems http://twitter.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/thepodcast