Terminal

5:45am to Charles de Gaulle.

The benches are uncomfortable here. The type that are slightly too small and the back not quite vertical, and after a while the cramping becomes unbearable, but there's nothing we can do but wait. We wait for the gates. We wait for Gate 13, Gate 24, Gate 35. We cluster. We form tribes, primal communities bonded by number alone, by nothing substantial, and for a brief moment perhaps we are part of something, and maybe we actually are Gate 13, Gate 24, Gate 35. But the moment passes and we wait.

Because that is what we do.

12:05pm from Heathrow to JFK.

It doesn't matter where we are. All different. All the same. That slightly off-white omnipresent lightning, turned up too bright so that all other colors are washed out to the color of a twenty-four hour headache. Midnight sun that removes every shadow, like everyone’s been cut out of a photograph and pasted onto a white wall. The benches are still uncomfortable here. Along the walls we can see the frosted glass doors of the gates, frosted glass doors that slide open when the right person approaches and just for a second we think we can glimpse the secret world within. But it's too bright to see inside. We have to look away, and the frosted glass doors do not open for us.

So we wait.

Because that is what we do.

9:50pm to wherever.

She approaches when it is nearing our time. Her shoes click on the white tiles of the floor that always seem freshly cleaned, and she stops outside the gate and smiles. We all think the smile is directed at us, but no-one really knows for sure.  She walks to us, and takes us by the hand and as we approach the frosted glass doors we hesitate, because the washed out world we are used to is fading behind us. But they finally slide open for us and we step through. For the longest time it feels like we are slipping into warm water, and now we wait no longer.