I missed three flights in a row. At immigration, the woman in blue left a smudge on an empty page and told me about the flurry that had come down over the city. I’ve never seen anything quite like it, she said, like it’s trying to bury itself, and I nodded politely. On the tarmac, the lights shuddered on and off, a mass of fireflies falling into slumber. Remember that field last winter, I whispered, and nobody but the little girl in the first aisle heard me. Her eyes paler than the skeins of white outside the window.
Everywhere else, cities sank into dark water. When I called home, I heard nothing but granite static on the other side. The crinkling of newspaper, its faded pages folding over the face of a sleeping woman. Severe Drought Until August. Blues Singer Dead At 47. Downtown Movie Theater Condemned. The first taxi I flagged at the gate smelled like stale coffee and sweat, the seats sticky under my thighs. He asked me where I was flying in from, and I said that I wanted to go downtown, like the song. The glass was foggy from the AC and he never once offered to turn it up. I watched microcosms of color form through the condensation––spots of red and blue magnified against the dashboard––alight and blurring in late summer. At the movie theater, the men shot out the windows in reverse. In some lonely plaza, a woman stared somberly at the passing people and sipped from a tiny white cup. When the film rolled to a stop, I sat alone in the dark long after everyone else had filed out. I realized my cheeks were wet. All around me, particles of dust burning brighter and brighter in the stale air. And then, the steady beat of the projector churning to a stop.