Trip

Predawn-mumbles spread into the hallway
Yawns and zippers and clips and buckles
This trip has been on the calendar all year
Now it’s here and no one is excited to be awake
In an hour we’ll be standing in a line
In two hours we’ll be sitting on a plane
In eight hours we’ll be in a new airport
Stale sweat from vinyl seats dried to our backs
Hurrying into a foreign scape
To collect fading memories
In twenty years we’ll dust them off
And pass them around the dinner table
For the hundredth time with the same punchlines
And the same unanswered calls to go back together

-T. Weeks
(A response to “Sounds of the Winter“)