Gate Unknown

The airport hums softly
like a sleeping machine
that dreams of continents.

Announcements rise
and dissolve
before they mean anything to me.

Somewhere
someone is boarding.

Somewhere
someone has just arrived.

But here
time sits down beside me
and removes its shoes.

The windows hold
a long grey runway
stretching into weather
that has not yet decided
what it will become.

Planes drift in
like enormous thoughts
touching the ground briefly
before leaving again.

My gate number
glows quietly above me.

The screen says
Delayed

though it does not say
how long.

And strangely
this feels like mercy.

No one asks me
to hurry.

No one asks me
to choose.

My suitcase waits
patiently at my feet
as though it understands
that movement
is not always travel.

I close my eyes
for a moment

and the whole building
breathes around me—

escalators whispering
rolling bags
like distant rain
the slow migration
of strangers.

Somewhere ahead
there is another city.

Somewhere behind
there is another life.

But here
between departure
and arrival

I discover
a quiet luxury:

I do not know
when my name
will be called.

And for now

that uncertainty
is a kind of rest.

So I sit.

I watch the sky
through glass that remembers
every direction.

And I wait
for the next horizon

to decide
when I belong to it.