Communique

As I was waiting for my flight home,
a girl and her mother stepped off their
plane and into the terminal. The girl
stretched her arms out in front of her face
as far as she could, then cried out, “We’re
in another airport!”

Her mother took her left hand and said,
“Where do you think planes went,
to our house?” “Yes!” the girl proclaimed.
She waved her right hand over her head.

“No,” her mother said, and she led her daughter
away from the gate and toward the baggage
claim. The girl continued to wave with her
right hand, her palm straining toward the sky.
I waved to her, but she was walking too
far ahead and looking far too high to see me.

Greetings

The only way he said his name
was with a smile. When he
introduced himself to me, he
smiled, and it took me a moment
to remember he had said his name
in a whisper.

I had to lean close and ask him
for his name one more time, and he
breathed in with a grin across his face,
as though I had just asked him some
stupid question, and he could only greet
it with a stupid question of his own.