Waiting

Repost from 2017 for Christmas.

In June of 1999 I was traveling back to Portland after visiting my father in Tucson with my three-year-old daughter in tow. We missed a connection and wound up in the Las Vegas Airport. It was my first time in that city, and in the late hour the airport was almost empty

An island of garish casino machines lit up like Christmas with blinking bulbs of blue and red and green blurted noises and snatches of distorted music across the empty carpet. My daughter was sleeping across my lap as only children can. I was pinned into the chrome and vinyl seat.

From the nest of slot machines emerged a young girl. She was faded like a Polaroid left on a dashboard. She didn’t look quite real, as though caught in the act of leaving this world for the next one. Though young, she seemed crushed into early old age.

She sighed as she plopped into a seat,  but there was no relaxation. Her furtive eyes kept darting past me toward the bar. She seemed anxious.
I grabbed my notebook and wrote this poem.

las vegas airport
sitting alone
chipped

toes push
out from cheap
shoes
ugly to begin with

rocking back and forth,
she knows how
to baby herself
at least

hair dyed to a fried and final black
thicked eyes to match
puffy with the hour

cruel style
jammed her into this dress
tighter every day

red nails click broken rhythm
against the cold chrome arm

eyes dart as  a redeye
spills a glazed and pasty cargo
to stumble toward the slots,
the islands of impossible, bright

glaring hope
in a sea of strangers

Written in response to The Daily Post: Waiting