Flying Solo

Flying Solo

That morning I watched the sunrise at Charles de Gaulle I was washed of love, as singed at the edges as the yellow-centered ball of light that rose slowly above the glass skyway,
bright as the gold leaf of Jesus’s heart in the Sacre Coeur that began to beam as I prayed, pulsing into life,
everything contained within the hushed echoing curved stone of the chapel,
everything

And then the sun faded to the pale light of a bland blue day
observed outside of the cask of the airport
and, hunkered down for hours in my hard-shell corner chair,
I was encompassed by the grandmothers, aunts and old men, sullen teenagers and crawling diapered babies of an extended family, chests and luggage all plastered with International Organization of Migration stickers, in their hodgepodge colorful clothes embarking resignedly on a new life