Airport Prayer by Esther Sadoff

Airport Prayer
Esther Sadoff

If I count the times I cried today,
I would need more than two hands—
an 81 year old passes through security
and tells me her mother just stopped driving
yesterday at the age of 108; a woman at the counter
hands me my coffee and says Here, baby;
and when we are lining up at the gate by letter
and number and I don’t know where to go,
a woman tells me conspiratorially that I should
just go behind her. Sometimes life feels conspiratorial.
Like we are conspiring to help each other despite the noise.
How can I explain why I am crying for the glassy-eyed
dog being carried in a tote? For the little boy being led
bleary-eyed to catch a plane I pray will land safely?
I don’t want to be a part of this world, but I can’t stop
negotiating with time, with flesh, audience to myself,
spectator to my own body. I couldn’t bear to be called
baby every day and poured a cup of something hot.
I think it would break me. I can’t bear to be be born
again into the kindness of each and every moment.
I want to believe we are not witless, just wingless,
trying to soar above the wreckage we have made.
That tears are never wasted. Is it foolish to pray
for something you know already exists?
For something that is everywhere?