Sea-Tac

I almost missed everything again. This happens to me at airports.

I expelled myself inch by inch down the aisle of the small plane and emerged onto its railed stairway to see a tarmac worker below waving two wands. In baton semaphore, he ordered the string of passengers to walk along a path marked by thick white paint and into a covered passageway. This is what everyone did. This is what outlines do.

Under the canopy, I was moved up a ramp, compelled to follow the flow of shuffling feet and bumping suitcase wheels ahead. We all turned switchback-style up toward the next turn.

And then the thunder of an airplane gathering its power and departing the earth shook the enclosure. Through a crack in the wall I saw the Southwest Airlines jet as it pointed into the sky. Blue and red and yellow.

I almost missed that I was someplace else.




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