They kiss goodbye, and this time she
doesn’t cry because it feels more normal, like maybe it is not the last time.
His kiss says ‘its not goodbye but see youse later’. Se turns his baseball cap
backwards so she can snuggle her face into his and touch noses, feel his beauty
up close. She waves goodbye and watches out the back window until he is out of
sight. She doesn’t cry until the airport. He is an engineer and project
manages. She is there before check-in, there is no shrieking about almost
missing the flight or cutting ques like when she is in charge of logistics.
In line for customs a couple argues.
“Come into his line!” she says
“No! This one could move faster.”
“That’s stupid. They are both the same
length.”
“Actually….” I cut in. “you’re better off
in both lines. Then if yours moves faster he can cut in and vice versa. I have
this argument with my partner all the time. He refuses to go and stand in the
other line I tell him to stand in.”
“See, I told you!” he says.
“Hey if you’re ever really strapped” I say
to the chick, “That desk over there is for when you are just about to miss your
flight. You don’t have to wait at all! Its great. Just show them your boarding
pass to show that it has stared boarding already.”
She smiles and chills out on the guy a bit.
“It sounds like you have done this before… “ We swap some biography. They are nice
enough, he joins our queue and at the end there is no more hostility.
I am looking for an orange juice.
“The most expensive pens in the world!”
says dad to his 5-year-old son walking past the Mont Blanc store.
“But I just don’t see how this cannot be
fixed!!” says the French girl at the Changi service desk.
A Chinese couple buy some gourmet macaroons.
The Lover has emailed me. I write back a really
long reply, it cuts out and I can only send the short one- “I want to give you
the world, wrapped in rainbows and glitter. You are my rainbows and glitter.”
“That brought a tear to my eye” he
responds.
‘Well stop crying you big wuss bag” I go to
write until I hear my name paged for a final boarding call. “F****ck!” I
exclaim shutting down. The girl next to me says “that’s you?” Yes!” I respond.
“Where are you going? Just in case, it is,
like, me to!”
“Yangon?”
“Not me. Cool. Good luck. I would run if I
were you.”
I dart through the crowds and think about
my warped idea of time. In what country did I live in this last life? Not
Germany or Japan it would seem.
The Lover now buckles in for the night, the
next few weeks without me. I wonder how long he will stay. I am happy to spend
whatever to see him every second weekend, we thought that would be enough, but
such is the inevitable way of life we underestimated the importance of the
little things. The way he gets up first and makes the coffee. They way I would hear a
happy song on the radio and turn it up before we showered. The going home
together, yabbering about out days, planning supper. The simple Saturday mornings,
sitting on the beach with coffees. My greatest value to him was companionship
and that has been ripped out from under him. He lived with my instability and
danger in the darkest days but there was always the promise of me, ever present,
coming home… And now that is gone. I don’t know if he will stay. I can only
live in the moment and wonder.
Some days I wish the plane would crash and
I could stop moving, being, f*cking everything up. But I would have to write
down the stories first so that someone could either laugh or learn.
