Flight

Nothing was said about delayed flights, crap food, the waiting or the alcohol. Instead they sat largely in silence, watching the bubbles rise in jumbo sized Sam Adams, listening the tuneless hum of the thousand nameless. A child wandered away from a mother on a cell phone. It was dressed in duck covered overalls and lifted its knees wildly in the new thrill of two legged. Jonathan watched the kid absentmindedly taking occasional sips from his beer. The mother noticed by the time it had almost reached Jonathan's table, scooping it up a few feet away. As she pulled her baby toward her something changed fundamentally. The air seemed finely clear and he felt as though small particulates, the atomic elements of the world were suddenly exposed... as though one he had one eye to a microscope and the other fixed on the view from an airport bar. This did not startle him. It seemed only natural. But what did startled him was how desperately and how suddenly he wanted a cigarette after so many years. How every part of his body ached for it in a kind of rhythm, in a kind of time.