Gibbon’s Decline and Fall

Logan, Terminal C

 
I could do without my sons, she says,
the woman rinsing her hands beside me.

Natural and artificial flavors, her voice,
like flat orange soda—              Wait.

How is it she doesn’t fear the reach
of tragedy’s terrible, plausible legions?

Baffled, I fight to neutralize my face.
You’ll have a theory; I’ll call when I—

but here’s the gate, and here she sinks
beside me, the seats fixed so close

we’re conscripted into mutual surveillance.
It’s nearing dark. At home, amid rapid-fire

reports of Pokémon trades and NASCAR drama,
you are making sure our son ate his lunch carrots.

I open a book I’m told I ought to read.
The woman with clean hands scowls at her phone.

Now, from some gray point, an alarm erupts
as if someone in the terminal has neglected

to fasten her seatbelt, or has shoplifted
infant formula, or has attempted to escape

a memory-care facility. Ruthless, the sound,
unrelenting, somehow viscous. No one flinches.

The woman with superfluous sons fiddles
with an earbud. I close the book, unread.

The siege lifts ages later, suddenly. Among us,
like some lost Magritte, a girl stands cradling

a broom—no, half a broom—swaddled
in glossy cobalt ribbon. Her bag is an ibex,

her scent woodsmoke and apples.
I can’t get a handle on her face.

Call it recency bias, or cowardice,
or contrition: I text you anyway,

but only about the girl and her broom.
Because at home you are starting dinner,

you are quizzing our son on aqueducts
and Visigoths, on Vandals and Byzantium.

Because you believed me when I said
what I would do, if tragedy’s legions struck.

Because it was a cruel thing to say,
even if it is true.