Half Way There
Halfway There
People. Droves of them, hustling off to their appointed gates with
seventeen suitcases strapped to themselves like pack mules. All scowling, furrowing their
brows. Hoping to get to where they want to go, and with all seventeen suitcases they
came with. Me I only had two bags, but one of them was large enough to be a body bag.
Beside me was my cousin, a tall 16-year old, the jock type, with broad shoulders and
pimple covered cheeks. He, of course, got stuck carrying my oversized bag. As we made
our way past the ticket counter the automatic doors whooshed open, nearly sweeping us
away in a blast of icy air. It was close to December in New York, which means one thing:
cold. The kind of cold that hurt the skin, just breathing made people cough. As we zigged
and zagged our way through the seething maze of bodies, we kept looking down at the
flight information in my hands.
?Gate B-17, I?m sure of it? I said, none too convincingly apparently, for he
kept reading aloud the gates and their destinations. We reached a fairly quiet section of
the airport, and all the sounds became subdued. It
plane, said, over, made, became, way, through, seat, people, out, one, old, off, new, looking, looked, kept, just, ground, eyes, cold, clouds, bags, workers, woman, window, whole, white, tossed, thing, stuck, stepped, stares, soft, slid
