Crafted beauty #3: Terminal(s)

Poetic reflections on solitude and loss

The following two poems explore solitude and loss, linked by the theme of travel. At the end of both, I give more context on when I wrote these and what they were about. They were from two very different times in my life, but I am taken by how much unites them.

I.

There’s nowhere as lonely as airports. 
You are reminded how easy it is for people to leave you. 
You begin to feel the quiet complicity of the stranger beside you. 
Your elbows graze and it doesn’t feel like an assault. 
He is silent as you read your book, like he is holding the quiet for you, 
Mindful of the space you need to soak in the words. 
And then he is gone, without a backward glance. 

People move like this in airports. 
Fast. Moving you out of the way, moving through you, 
Hardly moved by you. 
We are all afraid here, ready to hurry, poised to plead,
Willing to do anything to not be left.

II.

She said it was terminal.
It made me think of airports, like it always does. 
And in many ways, it was still right. 
The waiting and the essence of time, 
The constant state of being in transit
The uneasiness that you feel till you arrive —
Somewhere. 

It felt like a terminal too. 
People everywhere all the time,
Coming and going the only reliable act, 
People paying close attention to the plan, 
All trying to achieve what they came here for —
Walking away and saying bye, always saying bye. 

I wish you were a passenger too, 
And you could leave this state, this place.

She said it was terminal,
And it made me think of planes —
Soaring high and resting somewhere above the clouds. 

I wrote the second poem in 2015, as I grappled with my Aunty Maria’s illness; while the first poem was written earlier this year, in the course of my constant travelling. I have changed a lot between 2015 and now. The loss of my Aunty Maria in 2016 catalysed a fearlessness in me — an openness to the world and to life, first revealed when I let go of a long-lasting romantic relationship, spurred on by the reflection that if I could handle the death of a loved one, then I could face all forms of loss.

The person I am now — the person who thirsts for beauty and joy, who travels, even alone, who submits herself to sometimes solitary and difficult experiences, was only born after 2016. And ultimately, outside of the themes of travel and the awareness of lack in both, what connects these two pieces is that if I didn’t live through the second piece, I would not have written the first.

What is clear is that there is pain in both pieces. But, don’t be deceived — when I leave the airport, I find life and beauty. And this is where I am now —on the other side of both poems— outside the terminal (in a literal sense, I write this from New Orleans). Outside the “terminal” and what it represents in these pieces, I am grateful for all I have seen, for the love I have known; and for all the beauty that is to come.

This post is dedicated to my Aunty Maria, whose birthday it would have been tomorrow, 20th November.

Prompt:

Write about how joy and pain may be linked in your own life. Share it with me (by sending it on instagram, or replying by email if you’re a subscriber) in the next week, and it will go up on the Instagram page.